Ubi sunt?
or, où sont les petites filles d’antan?
Today I saw a perfect little girl, perhaps seven years old (like Lewis Carroll’s Alice), beautiful, well-behaved, serious, clutching a large teddy-bear (nearly as big as herself) and a quarto-sized book which she was gravely reading. She wore a long grey-brown dress, very sober, which suited her completely. She had long blonde hair. She smiled once, vaguely in my direction, and I smiled once, vaguely in hers. After a while, she left the library with her mother.
I have no sexual fixation on little girls, but when I see such a child I get an inkling of Lewis Carroll’s feelings—and how he lost interest in them when they grew up. For me, who am normally sexed, they might be very interesting too when they are grown up, but in a totally different way. And meanwhile, I lament a death. The death of the child.
Another case. This time I have watched the process moving on through four years—the years 1 to 5 of the Second Millenniun. In the years 1 through 4, I met the same little girl annually at a family party given for a special group of adults each February.
This last year, 5, she was not there, but I saw her at a concert, and she is no longer a little girl.
I will call this lovely child Alix. There was a swimming pool involved.
Year 1. Alix is 8. She is in the pool, I sitting on the shore. Dialog:
Alix: Is your wife a member of the Group?
Myself: No.
Alix: Is she at home?
Myself: [slowly] No.
Alix: Is she dead?
Myself: Yes.
Alix: I am sorry I made you sad with my questions.
I told her she hadn’t, and we talked of my grown-up daughter.
Alix: She must be company for you.
Myself: Yes…
Then we discussed her school, and the subjects she liked best. She said, perhaps Handwriting. I said, “I bet you’re better than me.”
Alix: Why?
Myself: I don’t know. I never was any good.
I wrote in my diary after that evening: What a pity little goddesses grow up…
Next year, Alix is 9. My diary comments: “A perfect blonde angel.” At the dinner after the pool session, she served us guests, still in her bathing costume. We had some conversation. She said she had had a great-grandfather of 95, who wanted to live to 100, but didn’t quite make it. I discussed Harry Potter’s Philosopher’s Stone. She said, “It makes you live for ever. But we are mortal.”
Yes, we are, my dear, and in more ways than you realize.
Year 3: Alix, now 10, is taller, but still a child. She is praying for peace (we are at war in Iraq)
Year 4: I comment in my diary: “Alix is 11. She is budding, but still a charming child.”
This year she was not at the party, for she was involved in more adult activities. I have seen her briefly, in passing. A young woman is growing. That lovely child is no more.
This is of course a universal experience. I have seen photographs of myself at very young ages. I remember how, like the little girl in the library, I had a huge toy animal, a monkey, which I took everywhere, also like the girl in the library. I was good-looking, for a small boy, and sometimes looked quite cute.
That little boy I once was, is dead. He was dead by the time I reached 13 years.
I am now an old man, and can only lament these lost, dead children.
Verweile doch…If only we could stop Time, make these little goddesses (and perhaps little gods) immortal. I make them immortal in my heart, but my heart aches, as I know that this is not enough.
Ubi sunt qui ante nos in mundo fuere…including, not least, our former selves.
David Lake
2005
I first intended to make this a poem, but the subject is a great commonplace, so I thought personal testimony would be better.