An Ode to Growing Up

I found myself back home before my fourth year at university began. This time was a bit different than before, as I found myself reminiscing about the past when nothing but childish worries mattered. As I wandered around the streets where I grew up, I had this unspeakable feeling on my chest growing heavier and putting pressure on my heart.

I always cherished those beautiful, fancy poems on childhood and nostalgia yet this time I felt those words to the bone, wondering what had happened and how time had flown by before I knew that I was now a grown-up with responsibilities.

You probably know William Wordsworth's 'Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood' I remember the day we studied this poem in our 19th Century British Romantic Poetry class. I had this urge to read this poem but now without an academic worry; just reading it because I feel like it. As I read the lines, the poem revealed itself in a more intimate and genuine way. As a shared human experience, once again I realized that Wordsworth taps into the universal longing for childhood innocence.

As shared in his lines, I felt as if I was ten again and the colors seemed brighter than usual. The sensations of childhood returned at that moment and I found this exact feeling reading the poem. The speaker's meditations on childhood and purity were speaking to me through the street that I had been walking around, and at that moment I realized that those were the days that will live with me even though they are now long gone. A part of me is still the little girl playing games and growing day by day. This was for the little girl that lives within me, and for you to know that a part of your childhood still lives within you.

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

      The earth, and every common sight,

                         To me did seem

                     Apparelled in celestial light,

           The glory and the freshness of a dream.

It is not now as it hath been of yore;—

                     Turn wheresoe'er I may,

                         By night or day.

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.