"the whole world..."

when I was
a girl

the whole world was
only as
large as my front yard...
and I knew everyone
that existed...in my
whole world.

and
as I grew, the world grew...
soon it included
the cul-de-sac
we roller-skated
around on
summer evenings, just
after the
sun went down and
fireflies created magic under the
grass-sweeping branches of 
our willow tree,

that fall the whole
world expanded again,
when
my sister and I
walked to school through
the field filled with
tall golden grass and
rusty farm implements
that surrounded our
neighborhood.

this new, bigger
whole,
wide world was filled with
yet
more people...my teacher,
a janitor, the principal...
but I knew them all...
and they knew me.

my world was bigger,
but I was not afraid...
because
it was my
whole world

and it was enough of a
world
for a girl who lived in
dreams and
books...

but late one night
during a family vacation,
we were driving through Indiana
and
while eveyrone slept
in the back of our
station wagon...

everyone
but dad
and I "up front" listening
to the radio and singing with
the Every Brothers....
I caught a glimpse of a
lonely woman through
the window of
an apartment building along the
highway...

she was sitting
at her kitchen table,
bent low
over a tea cup,
her head in her
hands

and in that fleeting moment,
as our car sped along a ribbon of
asphalt and streetlamps, 
I knew she was sad
I could feel her sorrow
through the sheer curtains
that almost
masked her pain...

she didn't know me
and I didn't know her...

it shocked me to realize
that this was true...that

there were people with
stories...like mine...
and I didn't
know them...and they didn't
know me.

the woman in
the window
had no idea
that I was aware of her pain,
that I was thinking about her
sadness,
that she was not alone
behind her
sheer curtains
in the
soft summer air

and suddenly my whole world
was larger
than my neighborhood
and the field
filled with tall grass,
it was more
alive than books and stories where
heroes won battles,
and pricesses lived
happily ever after, and Nancy Drew...
and Bess and George...
always
solved the mystery of
the Hidden Treasure on
Lilac Lane.

There were people
who were laughing at jokes
I'd never learned,
mothers singing lullabies I'd never
heard,
and people who didn't know that
I loved to eat red hots while
I read stacks of libary books in my lower bunk,
that I missed my mother even if she was only 
at the grocery store,
or that I pretended I was really
the daughter of an Irish
king who'd sent me to live with
my parents in America to
save me from
an evil
witch.

As I grew
my whole world grew...

new cities,
strange languages,
sorrow and famine,
the beauty of a New England autumn,
the chaos of war,
the wonders of Africa,
women in despair...

and as my world grew
so did my
heart...

acre for acre...

but when I was
a girl
my front yard
and
the people
who
lived in
my
house
filled the
whole world
for me...

and it was
enough

until it
wasn't