A girl who looked to be about four or five years old sat in front of the clubhouse play and watched the scene with wide eyes. Not only did she watch, but this was a brief shelter for her, a world apart from her own. In the dim light, her wide, unblinking eyes seemed to reflect the stage's bright colors, giving a hint of the thoughts going through her mind.
Because the child was so involved, the players' silly dialogue and over-the-top movements seemed to be trying to answer questions. She gripped the edge of her seat with her little fingers, as if she were grounding herself in this made-up world that was a break from her real life.
It was like the play was a soft mist that kept her from seeing the complexity outside the theater doors.
Still, there was something deeply moving about this simple scene: a feeling that wasn't clouded by experience. The child's rapt attention showed that she wanted to understand things that were bigger than her years.
As I watched her, I had an intuition: maybe by making sense of this innocent escape, I was showing my own wants, my need to find comfort in the graceful dance of fiction. Maybe I was looking for my own adventure in hers.
