I asked my dad once about his dad, my grandfather. I knew he'd had some hard times. But I didn't know a lot more than that. I said to my dad, "I guess maybe he was kind of lost." "Not lost, really.” my dad said. But for a while, he was definitely bewildered.

In ordinary times, when you're a kid, all you ever want is for the stories your mum reads you to be true. You think you can crawl inside the world that's in every book and live in the pictures on every page. But deep down you know that this isn't something that could ever happen. And knowing that the magic isn't quite there, that it's just over the next hill or maybe in the next story makes you feel safe in your bed at night. You really wouldn't want it to be any other way.

My grandfather used to tell my mum that kids should never have to worry about anything more serious than baseball. Everything you need to know is there. It has success and failure, moments where you come together and moments where you stand alone. And it has an ending, not a clock, like in other sports, but an ending. And that, my grandfather used to say to my mum is as close as a kid should have to come to that sort of thing.

When you're little, you like to think you know everything, but the last thing you really want is to know too much. What you really want is for grownups to make the world a safe place where dreams can come true and promises are never broken. And when you're little, it doesn't seem like a lot to ask.

As long as I can remember, people have liked to talk to me. You know, kind of how somebody says something to you, doesn’t have to mean so much. It's just that it opens a door for you, and you can see into a room you couldn't see into before. It doesn't really matter how you got there. The important part is, you're seeing something new and different.

I don't know what will happen next, I don't know what I'm going to be, what I'm going to learn. But what I do know is this—life. All life is about asking questions, not about knowing answers. It is wanting to see what's over the next hill that keeps us all going. We have to keep asking questions, wanting to understand. Even when we know we'll never find the answers, we have to keep on asking the questions.

I think, when you're older, what gets hard is that you forget how to take things as they come. And sometimes, the things that do come are more than anyone should have to take.

People say that when we grow up, we kick at everything we've been told. We rebel against the world our parents have worked so hard to bring us into. That part of growing up is kicking at the ties that bind. But I don't think that's why we kick at all. I think we kick when we find out that our parents don't know much more about the world than we do. They don't have all the answers. We rebel when we find out that they've been lying to us all along, that there isn't any Santa Claus at all.

When you're a kid, anything can take you away: soap bubbles, or a hose spraying a rainbow up over a new-mowed lawn. I guess growing up means that it gets harder and harder to find your way back to that kind of place where you can be taken. The one time I see grownups with that same sort of look on their faces is when they're just at first falling in love.