a changed life

"My life had changed, I thought; I seemed older, and yet the lives of my schoolmates seemed unchanged.  The Kid still raced at the bridge, Samuel nodded and walked on, Horse and Bones kicked at each other, and the yellow buses still cam in with their loads of solemn farm kids."

(Anaya, Bless Me, Ultima, p.186)

In a short three weeks time, the young boy Antonio had witnessed a horrific murder, battled a deathly case of pneumonia, experienced a dark delirium as a result of his illness and bid farewell to his brothers for a third time.  The quote above, from Rudolfo Anaya's novel Bless Me, Ultima, illustrates the Antonio's thoughts as he returns to school after a hellish Christmas vacation.  His friends and schoolmates are the same people they were when school let out a few weeks prior.  Their lives are simple and unchanged.  Antonio is different; his life is not the same nor simple.  He has witnessed and experienced things that have changed him forever.

When I was pondering this quote and the experiences of Antonio I began thinking about the life of a soldier upon returning from war.  A soldier returns home a different person while friends and family, although older, lead the same lives as before.  From this thought my mind wondered to the C. S. Lewis novel, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe.  In this epic fantasy story, four siblings are transported, as children, to the mythical world of Narnia.  They live and grow up in this world eventually becoming kings and queens.  As young adults they are transported back to the world they left as youth.  They return as children as if they never left.  Yet the siblings retain the experiences and memories they gained in Narnia.

Over a short Christmas vacation, Antonio experienced events that most individuals don't in a life time.  Similarly, a soldier or the children returning from Narnia come back with souls full of knowledge that most will never understand.  Maybe the most difficult element to cope with isn't the experiences themselves, but the act of returning to a life you once had.  How do you take the effects of war, sickness, death and growing up and proceed like nothing happened?  How do you act normal again?  This is the challenge handed to the young boy Antonio.  He is forced to return to the third grade--a place where he no longer fits.