To Put Away Childish Things

I must have been two years old. Mummy & Daddy had a special book that had bright, vivid pictures like none I'd ever seen before. The stories we read from it didn't have pages like my other books - they weren't colourful or fun to touch but it didn't matter, because the pictures seemed to move in front of my very eyes, whisking me away to see my friends under the sea, or into the air among a million balloons, in a heartbeat...

One day I watched a story about a man. Or rather a story from a strange man in a blue vest. He seemed to speak straight to me, and I could read in his eyes the importance of what he said - even if I was too young to understand fully at the time. He spoke to me about getting older and even asked me what I would like to be when I grew up…I forget what I replied … but the one thing I do remember was him urging me to "keep dreaming". I laughed and told him he was a 'Silly man!! ... You can't dream when you're awake!' … "Tristam-Lewis-Summers!" said the man, raising his voice and fixing me with his big green eyes, "THAT is the best time to dream".

I asked my parents often about the 'silly man and the magic book' but never saw hide nor tail of either. I was told that the whole idea was itself a dream, or something I had imagined. At school I wrote silly stories of magical lands, creatures of the future and was invariably told to be give up such childish pursuits, be sensible and concentrate more. But, fact or fiction, It didn't matter to me - I kept the man's message where all good stories lie - at the back of the mind yet close to the heart.

Years have passed since that sunny moment and I am now a man grown myself. Inevitably there comes a time when we look to the future and ponder our own legacy and what we may leave behind - will it be fame, success, money, children... We wonder what these enduring remembrances will speak of after our all-too-brief time - and we endeavour to shape them in a way that reflects the people we wish so much to be. In the end, all we can really hope is that one day we all see a glimpse of 'the strange man' (and all he stands for) reflected back to us in those things we love and leave behind.

Tristam Summers (1987 & 2013)?