Childhood Wonder

When I was younger, summer meant going swimming, getting ice cream, and taking trips to the Montshire Museum. Now, although some of those things still apply, I experience them differently than I used to. When I was young, I couldn’t hold still; I would swim for hours, or run around on the beach until I was forced to get out and apply sunscreen or take a break. Now, I sit in the sun for a while before swimming, and I will still run around from time to time, but the beach trips now feel more relaxed than before. Then, I would make sand castles and play water vs sand till someone won, but I haven’t done anything like that in years. Getting ice cream when I was little was always something to look forward to, a vanilla soft serve ice cream in a cone with rainbow sprinkles, never hard serve ice cream because it was too hard to eat. Now, I get either chocolate or Maple, no sprinkles, but still in a cone, and still no hard serve because it hurts my teeth. 

The Montshire used to be the best place to go on a boring summer day. You could go see the ant colony, the fog room, go outside to the water area, or see whatever the new exhibit was at the time. I went to the Monchire this year for the first time in maybe five or six years, and for the most part, it was just like I remembered. I went up to the fog room with my younger cousins, dropped the helicopter things over the side railing, and looked at the stuffed moose, but they had gotten rid of the ant colony. I wasn’t sure why this was, and I didn’t ask; I just accepted the change because of how long it had been since my last visit, who knows the reason. What I do know is that even though I’ve changed since I was younger, and the places and things I used to do have changed, I can still find joy in those activities. Even if they are being appreciated by an older version of myself, I know inside, a little me is still bouncing around full of childhood wonder.