The Stolen Child

As I let go of the past, the past let go of me.

I am gone and am not coming back, but I remember everything.

The children will need new stories and fairy tales to see them through their nightmares and daydreams, to transfigure their sorrows and fears at not being able to remain children forever.

To lose one’s name is the beginning of forgetting.

Memory, which so confounds our waking life with anticipation and regret, may well be our one earthly consolation when time slips out of joint.

It's only a story.' As if such words made it less real. But I did not believe him even then, for stories were written down, and the words on the page were proof enough. Fixed and permanent in time, the words, if anything, made the people and places more real than the everchanging world.

I beg you to understand and accept that no matter what name, I am what I am.

Allure goes beyond appearances to the way they grace the world. Some women propel themselves by means of an internal gyroscope. Others glide through life as if on ice skates. Some women convey their tortured lives through their eyes; others encircle you in the music of their laughter.

Between the covers a book can be a sin. I have spent many hours in search of a waking dream. And once having learned to read, I couldn’t imagine my life otherwise. The indifferent children around me didn’t share my enthusiasm for the written word. Some might sit for a good story while told, but if a book had no pictures they showed scant interest.

I would not want to be a child again, for a child exists in uncertainty and danger. Our flesh and blood, we cannot help but fear for them, as we hope for them to make their way in this life.

O que a memória perde, a imaginação volta a criar.

Between the covers, a book can be a sin.

In setting down these recollections of my early years so far removed from their unfolding, I am fooled, as all are, by time itself. My parents, long gone from my world, live again. Memory, which so confounds our waking life with anticipation and regret, may well be our one true earthly consolation when time slips out of joint." Chapter 6, The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue "Assembled in a small circle, our faces glowed in the flickering light of the campfire, signs of anxious weariness in our tired eyes, but the meal would prove revitalizing. As the fire burnt down and our bellies filled, a calm complacency settled upon us, like a blanket drawn around our shoulders by absent mothers." Chapter 20, The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue