I remember in my childhood more sunny days than cloudy ones. I remember bright colored houses that all seemed the same size. This was a wonderful time. I remember these yellow candies that tasted like sugar crusted custard, tangerine, and lemon drop. They looked like the perfect yellow circle a child draws representing the sun. These were tranquil moments in my youth. I remember as a child running through my uncle’s farm with my cousins and my next door neighbor chasing butterflies with nets. It seemed like we were running in slow motion through the fields, catching colors that surpassed even the hues of rainbows. I also remember when I was a few years older catching these big green grasshoppers that could fly and that had yellow and brown wings. I do not remember going in slow motion then. You had to be quick to catch them because they could fly away, so you had to be very quiet and slowly approach them, then as fast as you could snatch them up in your hand. Besides being fast you had to be very gentle at the same time or you would crush them. But no matter how gentle I was the pressure from my hands would make them bleed when I grasped them. Their blood was sticky and a shiny amber color at that age it seemed to me that it was the same color as sunshine, and even though they bled it did not occur to me that I had hurt them and that they were wounded and I would let them go afterwards. I was innocent then never realizing I was causing injury and pain.

When I did something to get myself in trouble I would be put on punishment and not allowed to play with my friends, but there was a hole in our backyard at the bottom of the fence caused by the roots of a pomegranate tree that had forced its way through the wood; where I would go and sit and talk to my friend next door. The pomegranate was one of my favorite fruits because when you opened it there were all these bright shining red seeds that looked like rubies. According to a myth pomegranate is the fruit that was eaten in the Garden of Eden.

Another one of my playmates was my pet rooster. He was crimson and orange and my grandfather used to enter him in cockfights. I guess he always won because they fought to the death and my rooster always came back home. We lived on a small farm and one day when I came home from school my grandmother made chicken stew that evening for dinner, but I could not find my pet. I refused to eat the stew because even though my grandmother said it was chicken stew, I knew in my five year old mind that it was rooster stew. I guess my crimson and orange rooster was a winner no longer.

One day I was watching my cat that I loved, a kitten with a shining golden, orange, and black satiny coat, and a soft purr. She seemed like the epitome of innocence, until she had caught this little brown mouse and was playing with it. What I saw was a cute but deadly game. Although the cat did not know this and was acting just as a cat ought to act, I am sure the mouse was not enjoying itself. This made me realize that innocence is not all it is chalked up to be, since all innocence is, is not knowing the difference between right and wrong. It is ultimately knowledge for which we should strive for in the end and it is only knowledge that can lead to a harmonious existence for all. But was there ever anything more enticing than that unblemished purity which is the semblance of innocence, hiding that inclination for savagery so completely and sometimes so tragically.

I also recollect attending a funeral of a young cousin of mine who passed away, and that day did not seem particularly sunny. Actually everything seemed kind of dull and brown. The landscape seemed tan and barren, the houses did not seem brightly colored they also seemed brown. But I think the brownest thing I remember seeing was my little cousin in that brown coffin. Yet even after that I can still remember the candy being sweet, the houses being bright, and the big red hibiscus flowers you broke off at the bottom of the calyx and drank the nectar from. I also learned that things ended, and that this was natural, and I learned to respect this cycle because this is the natural course of events.