By Autumn Mentink

I don’t have a lot of money. Mind you, this isn’t a complaint, but there gets to be a point when all things entertaining are costly.

At times like this, I try to remember what I did when I was kid and had even less money than I do now. Checking my memory, however, a majority of the activities from then don’t translate well to now.

The world seemed more full of adventure then, I think because it was bigger. The mountains I climbed as a child are now molehills; the forests I explored are just stands of trees. A thirty-minute hike is now a ten-minute walk. Friends who used to live down the street now live on the other side of country.

Still, I try to capture what little is left to me from those days. I still have my books, and though I read faster, at least the books are longer. I might not want a playhouse any longer, but I like my garden. Dolls and Legos have given way to Dungeons and Dragons and video games. Dressing up in costumeswell, that still happens, but at least then I go to Renaissance Fairs and my costumes are more elaborate. But, again, all this costs money. It did these things in my youth, too, but it wasn’t my money then.

But nobody’s put a tax on the warmth of sunshine – yet. No one can charge me for the color of the perfectly clear sky on a summer day. There’s no price on the feeling of the grass between your toes or warm asphalt under your feet. Despite how the candle companies feel, you can’t capture the smell of a breeze. There’s no color of paint that gives you the green you get when the sun shines through the leaves. Though other people can spend millions of dollars to have stars named after them, I don’t have to pay to look at them. They can put every animal in a zoo, but the birds in the tree outside my window say they haven’t gotten them all yet and they never will. And, though you can chase down fireflies and put them in a jar, it’s not the same as when they light up in darkness and look like falling stars.

Being an adult is hard. Personally, I like to snatch was little moments of peace I can get.

And now that I’m grown up, no one can tell me when it’s time to come in.