Memories Monday

Very young, 3? Maybe 4? Waiting with my parents off to the side of a podium, or stage, in a line with other children and their parents. The enormous amounts of light, sound, heat -- all of it seeming to take place so very far above my head. The brightness of everything. The too-much-ness of it all. Then: the hands in my back, pushing me gently forward, Go on, go on, it's your turn. Go on. And me not wanting to, wanting anything but that: to walk up the steps and across the stage and sit on that strange man's lap. The red and yellow and white of his robes. The feeling that everyone was watching me, and that he was so so far away.

But I did, and was rewarded for my bravery with a clementine and a net of golden coins. And probably a present of some sort, but I've forgotten that. What I remember most were those coins, and my surprise when my mother opened one up to reveal chocolate. The coins in and of themselves were enough, but that there was a hidden surprise of chocolate, oh my....

Later, walking out to the car, I lost most of them in the parking lot. And cried the way children do, when they've lost something that, in their eyes, had been won at great cost.