Through a Child's Eyes.

I was just standing there on the boardwalk with my camera when he appeared. Right over there, by the wooden deckchairs. Like a fairy in his water-wings he flits by, touching the wooden poles of the makeshift shelter out of innocent, childish curiosity. Losing his balance in the soft loose sand he stumbles with a little giggle. I capture his image; a still figure caught in time by a lens. Everything seems to amuse him; a paper wrapper blowing by on the wind, or even the rustling of the palm leaves far above his sandy head. He gazed after the wrapper briefly, and suddenly he was gone as quickly as he had appeared, like a dream; a memory. In the distance I thought I could see his shadow, but it was too hard to tell.

For me he had been a symbol of a time far behind me, a fleeting childhood that now seems to be but a dream, obscured by the sands of time. It's hard to think of life as being any different, but yet there it was, memories of the soft sand beneath my small feet, of waves that teased the shore, and booming ships in the distance. Now I am taller, more confident. The innocence is gone, and the world is an ugly place to be in. But sometimes that childish curiosity returns, and the world looks so beautiful.