friday five: where on the stairs?

At RevGals Jan plucks the strings of childhood memories (at least mine, where A.A. Milne was a fixture!):

Halfway down the stairs
Is a stair
Where I sit.
There isn't any
Other stair
Quite likeIt.
I'm not at the bottom,
I'm not at the top;
So this is the stair
WhereI alwaysStop.

Halfway up the stairs
Isn't up,
And isn't down.
It isn't in the nursery,
It isn't in the town.
And all sorts of funny thoughts
Run round my head:
"It isn't reallyAnywhere!
It's somewhere elseInstead!"

— A. A. Milne “Halfway Down,” When We Were Very Young

Thinking of your childhood as a stairway, when did you feel (and how did you feel then)

1. at the bottom?
2. at the top?
3. halfway?
4. At this point in your life, where would you place yourself on your own stairway?
5. Identify a place for you that "isn't really anywhere" but "somewhere else instead."

There is a lot going on in my inner and outer worlds these days. These questions tug at some of the work I am doing around issues of barriers, wounds, repair, restoration and healing. Some of that work has to do with me, some of it has to do with its presence in the lives of people about whom I care deeply.

There isn’t sufficient time in this day, and perhaps there is too much tenderness around what the responses would engender, to honor them here. Instead I invite the reader to consider them for him or herself, as they are indeed thought and feeling-provoking.

Blessings as you traverse the stairways of life.