Reflections on My Pacific Island Childhood.

Will I tell you that when I was a boy, there was time?
When I was a boy, I had time and I did not know that time was precious; I would loaf by the trees and eat my bologna sandwich, and fall asleep in the warmth of the sun. And when I awoke, there was time. I did not realize that it was hurrying past me. I lived in the hub of its wheel where I neither lost nor gained time, but I was still. And time was still with me and I was with time. And I was happy.

At dusk, I would carefully make a fire. The fire would warm me, and then I would go home. I would pass the pearl divers' huts and I envied their freedom. For a time I would linger by the pearl divers' huts and smoke papaya bark, and consider the undulating sea, until my mind burned with clarity.

Then, I walked on until I saw the smoking chimneys of my street, the smell of wet stone and burning wood and stale farts. The delight on my mother's face, the letter in her hand from my father, who had gone to Sydney for work, the pie she had baked. A time, lived in its own time, never guessing that it would one day be a memory.