when we used to play shoot 'em up

You know how this is. Summers used to stretch out forever, with crazy cloudy blue skies, lots of sunshine and best-friends jumping beside me into the warm backyard pool, tenting all summer long in the back-yard, bonfires, endless sports & games, fresh cut grass coming through the window, and the feeling that life was going to be infinite and great. Somewhere along about 11 years old, after pestering my mom for some must-have new toy, she sat me down and gave me a little reality check about the family's very finite finances, and I felt a shiver as the first of my innocence slipped away.

I remember retreating, ashamed of myself, into my bedroom to explore how I felt. My gut felt empty and sick, and I was in a funk for days. Somewhere I knew- you never really recover from knowing things. You can make things retreat into the shadows, but when that thing's context arises, up it springs, secure in its presence and power.

And then once you know something, how do you live in the meantime? You keep one eye on it, and you wonder how far away it is. Sometimes, at night, it sneaks up on you, and you have to run in fear or bow to it, and then in the morning, it retreats again.

. . .
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
. . .

I wonder what is it important to be doing, in this great long summer of meantime. It's daytime, and my peripheral vision is fine.