Keeping Secrets

    "Auntie, can I tell you a secret?" my eight-year-old niece asked me as we skated down the newly-paved street. "You promise you won't tell anyone?" 

    My heart stopped beating for a minute, and I said a little prayer, Please let this not be serious. 

    "I promise." 

    "You know those big kids. . . " she said, referencing a group of boys who were racing by on their bicycles. 

    "Yes."

    "You know, Auntie, this is really bad, but. . . " she paused for a minute to concentrate as she skated around a piece of cardboard that had blown into the street. "Those big kids, like, they don't wear helmets when they ride their bikes. Like, I see them all the time, and they never have helmets and that's really bad 'cause they could fall when riding their bikes and they could hurt their heads and they could be really hurt, so, like, they should wear helmets." 

    I breathed a sigh of relief, and then she said in a whisper, "And, Auntie, I don't think their moms know that they don't wear helmets. It's really bad." 

   

    Other than spending time with my niece, I do not interact with young children. I teach seventh grade, and I have no children of my own, so I really didn't know what to expect when she asked me to keep a secret. Over the years, I've heard some horrible secrets from my students, and, naturally, I imagined the worst when she brought up the boys on the bikes.

    The fact that she was genuinely upset that the big kids on the bikes weren't wearing helmets was so refreshingly innocent; it was unexpected. This child trusted me so much to share this, to her, magnificent secret. 

    In Songs of Innocence and Experience, William Blake wrote, "When voices of children are heard in the green, / And whispering in the dale,/ The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind,/ My face turns green and pale." Reflecting on this moment that I shared with my niece, I thought about Blake's Songs, and how he knew there were certain things that only children could understand and appreciate. With the "days of my youth fresh in my mind" I wonder: What happens to the innocence? Where does it go?