I remember my Uncle Henry. (My little girls tried to say his name. The best they could do was “Uncle Hungry.”) I remember being four years old. I do not remember going anywhere with my Uncle Henry when I was four years old. He said that he took me alone to someplace for kids. An amusement park? I don’t remember where he said that he took me.
He said he would never forget our brief conversation as he was driving me back home:
“Did you enjoy yourself?” he asked me. “Yes,” I replied. “Did you have fun?”
“Yes.”
“Would you like to go back there again?”
“No.”
“No? Why not?”
“Because I bin there already.”
How wise I was when I was four! I had expressed the message of William Blake’s poem,
Eternity
He who binds to himself a Joy
Doth the wingèd life destroy;
But he who kisses the Joy as it flies
Lives in Eternity’s sunrise.
Uncle Henry had asked me whether I wanted to bind to myself a Joy. I said no because I was content kissing the Joy as it flies and living in Eternity’s sunrise.
What wisdom I had when I was four! I don’t remember what happened to it.