"They do say that the happiest days of our life is when we are young and carefree. My dear late mother often said, 'Billy, if you carry your childhood with you and don't throw it away, you will never grow old'. There is no sweeter innocence than being unaware of world tragedy, the cruelty and the evil that mankind is capable of doing. Far, far better to stay young for as long as possible and to laugh at the world around you at every opportunity. Children have this beautiful capacity be able to spot the humour in most things, especially those things that adults take most seriously.
In my mind, I have always considered childhood as being the happiest of life's seasons. It is an enchanted place; a garden of young senses where colours are brighter, flowers more fragrant, the morning air softer and where anything and everything is possible. For when the moon ceases to be made of green cheese and cows can no longer jump over it, when the secret of Santa's identity is finally exposed and Lapland is no longer shown on the world's map, when lollipops stop growing on trees and The Mad Hatter's Tea Party will not come round again; then all childhood magic is finally crushed beneath the cruel weight of adult reasoning.
Whereas adults measure time in days, hours, minutes and seconds, children measure its passing in sights, sounds, smells and touch, before the dark hour of reason dawns. It is the saddest of time when one's childhood is lost, never again to be recaptured in all its glory until the senility of old age creeps back into the mind reborn.
Childhood shows the man and woman that follows, just as morning shows the day to come. The restriction placed upon a child's imagination by its parents is the first precious coin that adulthood steals from the child's purse. When I was a child, I always thought that once I grew up I could do anything I wanted like stay up all night or eat ice cream and lick my fingers clean without parental reprimand. Only increased age told me that this childhood dream was false and that it was just another childhood promise that was never kept.
So be not in a hurry to have your child grow up. Leave them for as long as necessary in their happy and unadulterated states of being until they are ready to abandon their childhood years. Allow their natural growth to occur without forcing the issue and they shall emerge as happy adults who shall forever remain capable of still deriving great pleasure from jumping in puddles for the sheer hell of it. Always remember that a graceful and honourable old age is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that still contains the colours of childhood immortality." William Forde: May 16th, 2018.