Dear Tom:
This Christmas, I am more aware of the child that still resides in me. I was born in Arkansas and raised in Memphis, Montgomery and Little Rock, but I am also from Never Never Land, Davy Crockett’s mountaintop, and the faraway lands of knights and dragons. We are men who have experienced the world and all its pleasures and disappointments, but there is still a deeper part of us that still “believes” like we did as children. No matter how forgotten or neglected, there is still a child in us that still lives with the possibility that fairy tales are true and Santa will come down our chimney on Christmas night. Look out the window as the first snow falls, and the child comes to life. The smell of fresh cut pine in the air, a certain Christmas Carol, an old photograph is found, or a phone call from someone in our past; and our heart’s leap with joy and our eyes grow moist. The child in us is always ready to spring to life from some unsuspecting event. Thomas Wolfe wrote “You Can’t Go Home Again” and in a sense for the adult that is true. But for the child who sleeps deep within, home returns to the child. It returns and brings to the child his/her own individual land of mystery and magic. The home to which we always can return, because we never left.
Your Friend, Webb
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