Staying young while growing older

This year for Christmas my mother gave me my first ever Lego set, which she picked up at the discount grocery. The little doll inside, a beach-blonde with a floppy sun hat and an iPod dock, was named “Chelsea.”

After opening the box, my husband Jonathan and I sat together on the couch with the block set enthroned on a tray table in our laps. My instinct told me to start building before perusing the directions, but I realized that if I did so I would never end up with the pretty Chelsea pool party pictured on the box. So we proceeded as directed, and for a full hour the real world disappeared—swallowed by a pink-and-purple-bricked universe of girly Legos. I had waited too long to embrace this activity. As a child I busied myself with more free-form construction projects, like Popsicle stick houses and no-recipe muffins. I had no idea what I was missing. But Jonathan is a Lego veteran. His hordes of plastic bricks repose in large drawers, codified by color.

I turned 24 on Sunday, an age that (to me) sounds hopelessly flat and mature. Jonathan took me to a fancy Italian restaurant, where I felt too embarrassed to try pronouncing my menu selection, instead saying, “I’ll have the one with the pork chops,” while dropping my big butter knife loudly on the floor. At the end, the waiters brought me tiramisu with a yellow candle, and said, “May you have many more birthdays and,” indicating Jonathan, “excellent company!”

Which brings me to my point. Here, in the first week of my 24th year, I keep thinking something that sounds cliché enough for a tourist plaque: If you must go on growing older, you may as well live with people who keep you young.

When Jonathan came home from a long and difficult day this week and crawled into bed, I inexplicably started channeling The Secret Garden. “Don’t worry,” I said, “you’ll be alright soon. Your legs will heal, and you’ll be outdoors tromping in the gardens with the butterflies!”

I don’t know why these kinds of pretend moments still seize me sometimes. I long ago gave up my box of discarded ballet costumes. I no longer schedule playdates with my childhood friends. But to my delight, Jonathan quickly responded, “I’m allergic to butterflies!”

I gave him a quick sip of water, telling him, “There you go. That’s the antidote to butterfly allergy. Soon you’ll be as good as new.”

I often tell people that getting married can be like becoming a kid all over again—as long as you marry someone with a good imagination. And having parents who remember your old loves doesn’t hurt either. When I opened the birthday package from my mother, I found a little bag full of my oldest, dearest treasures: Popsicle sticks. Now I have a date with my disused glue gun, which I buried somewhere under our bed.

I have never quite understood what Jesus meant when He said that the kingdom of heaven belongs to children. But as I grow older, I feel like I might belong there.