Small

I remember when I was small – my feet dangling off the front of the piano bench, too short to reach the pedals, but I don’t remember what it sounded like the first time my small fingers stretched wide enough to give birth to a chord. I remember standing on a dining chair in front of the kitchen sink as my mom scrubbed vigorously at my fingernails with a washcloth, but I don’t remember how it felt to surrender my body to the Earth and allow my small hands to melt into its flesh. I remember playing outside with the neighborhood kids. Barefoot, we would crouch in front of the curb by the stop sign and stare at the earthworms that had risen up from inside the Earth after the rain. I would lean all the way forward until my small palms held the warm, wet pavement and my nose was inches away from a worm. Squinting my eyes, I would stare intensely at its wrinkly body and I would think of my wrinkly grandfather. I don’t remember the last thing I said to my grandfather.

There was a day when the neighborhood kids and I stared at the earthworms for the last time, but none of us knew it was the last time we would ever share moments of our childhoods.

I’m not small anymore and I know that people only see the magic in a moment when all that’s left of it is a memory.

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