The Disappearing Touchstones of My Youth

It's strange. Eventually you realize that the stability you imagine the world has when you are a child is an illusion. The world dies every day, every second in fact, and any idea of order we ascribe to it is merely a desperate attempt to make something incomprehensible seem knowable.

So unless you want to fall into the dementia of nostalgia, you learn to abandon the touchstones of stability from your childhood. Or at least make the attempt. But it's hard to see the clear evidence that you were right to do this, and even harder to see one of those touchstones disappear. And the older you get, the harder it gets to endure such a loss, even of a person who you never met and whose work you never really liked all that much.

So this is a long way of saying that Shirley Temple's death hit me harder than I thought it would.

Yes, I'm a bit ashamed. And I also know that her loss is far more personal to her family and friends. Adulthood does teach you that the world is not just about you. Still, I'll never get used to seeing one of the landmarks of my childhood disappear. And it does seem harder to deal with the older I get.