In childhood, nothing is lost.

I don't remember open-toe sandals before the ones shown here. The sandals anchor me in a time when "favorites" matched with the accident of whatever my parents purchased. These might just as easily have been Mickey Mouse sandals, but they weren't. My brother wore M.M. I became attached to the duck. A young fan.

"From the past, it is my childhood which fascinates me most; these images alone, upon inspection, fail to make me regret the time which has vanished." RB in RB.

In the summer of 1977, I was three years old. We posed, my brother, mother, and me, on the back walk of my great-grandmother's Sheboygan, Wisc., home. 

The rediscovered sandals elicit a surprise effect; they spur my memory with the faint jab of some forgotten affection of things.  Not far removed, however, is a second intensity: the effortlessly gentle cupping of my mother's hand on my knee.

In childhood as in adulthood, everything can be explained in ratios of play to boredom.

play:boredom

I long for the intesive play sessions available on breaks from school and work.  Unrestrained by obligations, such episodes escape time. As such, they return me to the increasingly rare sensation of  quintessential childhood.