The Meadow 163 Pink Moon Laura Read On the last night of class, Stephanie wondered if Beauvoir was being descriptive or prescriptive in her chapter on “Childhood” when she said that what happened to the girl when she was young meant it was over for her when she grew up. I could tell Stephanie was worried about the girl she’d been and if what she’d become was her fault or if she just couldn’t help it. What had Beauvoir meant? It was Stephanie’s presentation, and we hadn’t read the chapter but we all knew the tone Simone could take. After class I can’t hold any more words like ontological or phenomenology in my head or even Being or Becoming and it’s a Pink Moon, so I go for a walk with my friends, all of them Philosophers, and we follow the river to the university where I first learned about Being and Becoming and then I said maybe we should just walk to my Childhood house, it’s so close. No one could believe it because they’d left their Childhoods in other cities, but I like a little knickknack shelf I can dust when I’m old where I’ll keep one of those Easter eggs you can open and inside there’s a bunch of small rabbits. I imagine I’ll get it down to show a (current) child who has come by selling something. I’ll say, Oh, you’re a child! I was one once!
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