The Stolen Child(hood)

I had heard of the poem, The Stolen Child, in the past, but had never really read it through until now. While some people may find it a bit creepy, I find it enchanting. I mean, if you read the word "faery" (the European spelling for "Fairy") the same way I do. Not as someone, but something. As a word to discribe imagination and discovery. The poem becomes, not about a creature that lures children into its world, but about a daydream, a walk in the woods, a jump into a newly rain filled puddle, a dig in the dirt, an imaginary friend, a world that a child might simply get lost in. Like a Mama at supper time, it calls to them.

"Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild.
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand."

The world IS full of weeping. Too many times these days, our children are forced to deal with the sadness of life. Too many times are there no ways around fears and grief. How else can they escape it if not with a "fairy"? If not with a childhood that is full of love, happiness, and adventure? It seems, these days that less children are being stolen by "fairies", and more childhoods are being stolen by... us.

As a society, we are forcing more and more of the adult world on our little ones. Pushing them to grow up by allowing them to do grown up things. As parents, it is our duty to defend their innocence. To protect them from the hatred, and the filth, and the pain of this world. To say "NO"! But do we? Do we go out of our way to give them what they deserve, what every child should have? Or are they, like the rest of us, just expected to look out for themselves? And when their tiny hearts cannot take any more of the weeping of this world, we blame them. We say that there is something wrong with them. We lable them. We chemically alter their brains to accomodate this "fast pace, no grace" way of life that we have become accustomed to. To zombify then into submission. To silence their cries for help. And in the end, as our culture slips away from all things humane and decent and further into a world full of weeping, we wonder why.

I have no fear of my children being stolen by fairies (Perhaps because I have been stolen by fairies myself). It is this world I would fear (If this world were my home, that is. But I am just passing through). All I can do, all each of us can do, is to steal back our little ones' childhoods from this cruel world. To stand up for those who are too weak to stand up for them elves. To rescue them from ourselves.

Clap your hands if you beleive in fairies!