I’m afraid I’ve forgotten how to be a child.

Is that really important, I wonder?

Maybe I’m supposed to be learning how to be a grownup—now that I’m married and have my own electric mixer.

It’s so important that we grow up. And it’s hard, like I wrote back in college.

Maybe it was somewhere in all of that.

Sometimes, in Slate Falls, all I thought was serious, grown up things. I didn’t have time to walk in the snow or take kids to Bible Study.  I just wanted to hide in my room and sleep. I just didn’t want anyone to die.

Maybe it was then. 

Somewhere in the last 6 years I’m afraid I’ve forgotten.

Forgotten how to lay awake and day-dream. Forgotten how to celebrate little joys. Forgotten how to delight in simple lighted candles or the way the snow looks in the morning. Forgotten how to live expecting good things. 

I’m not unhappy or depressed. Oh no! My life has been so so dearly beautiful this year. I love so many things, in a quiet, grown up way.

And I suppose that is how it should be.

But I miss it. I miss being that forever day-dreaming chatterbox. I miss getting flashes of inspiration. I miss that subtle expectancy that was always there in the corner on my mind. I miss reading a good book without feeling guilty.

And I’m only working two days a week, so it’s not like I don’t have time to be a girl again.

I just can’t seem to recover that part of me—which is a strange feeling, like a huge chuck of who Esta really is has just disappeared over the last few years without me realizing it.

Maybe that is how it’s supposed to be.

But I don’t like it.

I miss the Esta-girl a lot, now that my life has settled down enough for me to notice.