I work with kids whose different pasts have the effect of trying to swallow them whole on a moment to moment basis. The past is not always our “little friend.” Nor is it necessarily representative of a better time in a better place. It only is. I have no fucking romance for it. I live right here, right now. Oh course, we can learn from the past. But if we actually listen to it, the past is often whispering to us to let it go. I see kids every day who want to rebuild something from what are ashes. They would reconstruct it one tiny but at a time. I’m (not very) sorry, but I want to step on Ben’s attempt to make a new fire from an old fire. I am likely to take him to another place around our camp site. Where we might make a new fire that is not about what we did yesterday.