The Ocean at the End of the Lane

I was a normal child. Which is to say, I was selfish and I was not entirely convinced of the existence of things that were not me, and I was certain, rock-solid unshakably certain, that I was the most important thing in creation. There was nothing that was more important to me than I was.

I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.

Adults follow paths. Children explore. Adults are content to walk the same way, hundreds of times, or thousands; perhaps it never occurs to adults to step off the paths, to creep beneath rhododendrons, to find the spaces between fences. I was a child, which meant that I knew a dozen different ways of getting out of our property and into the lane, ways that would not involve walking down our drive.

I knew enough about adults to know that if I did tell them what had happened, I would not be believed. Adults rarely seemed to believe me when I told the truth anyway. Why would they believe me about something so unlikely?

“Will she be the same?”

The old woman guffawed, as if I had said the funniest thing in the universe. “Nothing’s ever the same,” she said. “Be it a second later or a hundred years. It’s always churning and roiling. And people change as much as oceans.”

I went away in my head, into a book. That was where I went whenever real life was too hard or too inflexible.

“Just go with it. It won’t hurt.”

I stared at him. Adults only ever said that when it, whatever it happened to be, was going to hurt so much.

I liked myths. They weren't adult stories and they weren't children's stories. They were better than that. They just were.

Children, as I have said, use back ways and hidden paths, while adults take roads and official paths.