Streetlights

By Erick Wilund

I am a young boy, on a suburban lawn, lying in the grass. I can feel the cool, vaguely rough blades under me and around my ears, my head pillowed in. I am aware of the vibrations of the neighborhood and the slow deep breathing of the earth. I am safe, even outdoors. I am aware of the things that live and crawl, the inhabitants of this lawn and the dirt beneath. I can still smell the lawnmower.

I have an idea which I believe is unique to me. I’ve always thought of it vaguely as the dirt theory. Its premise is simple. As a child, many of our life experiences and activities keep us naturally tethered to the ground. We played tackle football, and kill the man with the ball. We jumped in great piles of leaves, raked them back into piles, and did it again. We collected acorns and pinecones and stones. We made forts.

We traveled on our bellies playing army, and caught tadpoles in the pond. We played hide and seek. We watched ants busying themselves with a diligence we would never attain. We burned browned leaves on curbs with magnifying glasses. Some were more thoughtlessly cruel and burned other things, but I luckily never found that impulse in myself. We sailed leaves and beheaded flowers – or candy wrappers turned into vessels – on mighty rivers swollen from a dark blue rain, or fed from the carwash runoff of many driveways. We followed those torrents until finally losing our ships to the storm drain. Inevitably it was just as the streetlights began to flicker to life and we knew, without thinking, to head home for supper.

It’s something that dissipates as you grow older, when you begin to look up and around and discover that the things that most interest you are not below your feet anymore.

Of course, this was before the advent of endless screen time. In my house, the only screen was turned off and I was sent outside. We all were, and would join forces to roam the neighborhood on bikes or explore the local woods. Our screen time was in our imagination – or at least mine was.

I’m not sure I ever fully outgrew that stage of life. That kid exists in my memories, but also stands beside me, reminding me of what was once so important.

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