As fortune would have it, Tom was born to loving parents who tended to his needs selflessly. He grew from infancy surrounded by love and tender affection. This would subsequently influence every aspect of his ensuing life on the planet.
Sadly, on the strange and wonderful planet, such fortunate births were not always the norm. In the words of William Blake , a renowned poet, prophet, and seer who once lived on the planet, “Some are born to sweet delight, some are born to the endless night.” We can assume that our dear William was referring to the plight of those fortunate like Tom, and also those whose plight had been the misfortune of a birth surrounded not by love and affection, but rather hate, anger and resentment. The realms of love and hate produce quite different manifestations in the lives of men. Much of the story of our Everyman’s pilgrim’s progress through life, revolves around the clash of these opposites: Love and Hate, 
darkness and light, kindness and cruelty, ignorance and truth. The dynamics of human action are fire and ice clashing continually through the ages. They say that hate is but the absence of love, as darkness is but the absence of light. They say love conquers hate, and we can only hope that they are right. At any rate, in that dichotomy of forces, Tom was a fortunate son.
Within another dichotomy of the life experience, different individuals, are, to a greater or lesser degree, “of the world”, or “worldly” in their make up. This said, our Tom tended to be less. “Behold, here comes the dreamer.” Such was Tom often lost in his own thoughts. This was his nature as he grew.
But, at this point in the story, his nature was still largely obscured in infancy. It seems a defining characteristic of homo sapiens, that this infancy itself is like a dream. It is rare that any remember much from the first years. Each rests on a mother’s breast, before the claws and fangs of life are revealed. Like the Mothership before birth, that sweet breast, too, is lost to the memory, at least to the conscious memory. You could speculate on the reasons, but perhaps, it is that during infancy, life is a pure phantasmagoria, as yet void of any context other than the vague bliss of warmth and nurturing.There is no context for the memory to attach itself. Perhaps the bliss of infancy is so at odds with the harsh realities of life, the fight for survival, that the bliss can not be held long in the consciousness of the everyday. And yet,to be sure, the nature of the blissful years figures greatly as the psyche molds into its expanding cerebral context…….as the blank slate of neurons builds daily in complexity.
His worldly mother was as beautiful as only every Madonna of history could be. She was well formed and proportionate, sleek, and graceful. She walked like a willow tree. Her value was greater than rubies. She had a well kept household and was respected in the marketplace. She sang softly around the hearth.
His father was a Captain of the high seas. He was skilled and intelligent, strong in body and mind, a natural leader. Along with his wife, to better himself in the here and now, he sought wisdom from all of the great guidebooks of human history. Being as there’s only one common human condition, all guidebooks, the Bible, the Koran, the Bagada Vita, the Analects of Confucius, Aesop’s Fables, morality tales of all cultures throughout the ages, suggested pretty much the same game plan.. Laws of karma, the Golden Rule…..in a nutshell, that summed it up, but all the tricky weighing of complex circumstances, in each and every instance, was far from simple. And so through his childhood, Tom was instructed with the wisdom of the ages, through the diligence of loving Mom, and a loving Dad.
In addition to the moral lessons, there was the practical to be attended to as well….. like how to fish, how to shoe a horse or ride a bicycle, how to plant a garden or work on a machine, or build with wood, mortar, or stone. How to read the clouds or read the waves. How to tell an honest man, or how to keep a thief at bay. How to flip an egg. How to sew a button. How to cajole an angry dog. How to divide a pie into fifths. The list went on and on. There was a lot to learn in life, too much really.
It is said, that a zebra cannot change his stripes, nor a leopard change his spots. Just so, something in the core character of a human, likewise, does not change, from cradle to grave. And, in some sense, a person is never more the person that they truly are, than when a child. During those innocent years, the world is new and unknown, the persona is unfettered by pretense, the heart is an open book, and the eyes show a clear window to the soul. And yet, at the same time, a child can be a closed and unfathomable mystery, when amongst the unfamiliar. Tom was a typical baby, yet he seemed particularly thoughtful of his surroundings. As he grew into childhood,this thoughtfulness, seemed even, to flower onto his brow as a deep expressions of concern. It seemed to say,”What is going on here!”.
Some enlightened monk, once suggested, “Don’t Worry, be happy.”,but to those many who were unable to achieve that ideal, there seemed much to worry about. The world was a loose football, a run-away train, with the future uncertain, and the end always near. Since it is a common characteristic of man that he is terrified by the unknown, and since the only certainty of life, is its very uncertainty, there is always a lot of fear running about. Furthermore and unfortunately, fear seems to almost universally bring out the worst in people. Fear is the mind killer. Without it, the world might well be that proverbial Garden of Eden. With it, all hell breaks loose. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are continually on the loose, throughout the ages. But after all, death is a constant in life , so why make a big deal about it. It seems that children don’t.
Life was once described in the following metaphor: A river flowing towards a great precipice, is still a single river, yet at the start of the falls, that river breaks up into individual droplets and no longer appears as a river, but a falling mist until at the bottom the droplets all join, and become the river again. Such is life, that all of it is connected as one river, yet during the passage from birth to death, man is like the waterfall and thinks of himself as an individual droplet. He loses sight of himself as part of the one river of life. At the bottom of the falls, we all rejoin the river again. The Mothership. As our hero passed through life, it happened that whenever he saw a rose, a soft and fragrant breeze seemed to blow, and he somehow felt a distant connect with that unseen river.
The early stages of every life are a time of innocence. During these days, Tom played with bugs and stones, explored mud puddles with bare feet, and lay for long periods on his back, in the grass, starring up at the clouds, as they changed their form from one animal to another. Dreamily, he watched the big mountain. He watched the shadows change its face, as the sun moved. He felt the sun on his skin and felt the chill when it hid behind clouds. In autumn he watched the leaves color and fall from the huge maples. In winter he slid in the snow. In spring he watched the leaves return, and the flowers blooming, especially the rose buds. In summer he picked fruit from trees in the neighborhood….apples, plums, pears,cherries. He gorged himself. He picked blackberries from the thorny vines, and felt the pain of sharp pricks. He tried, as most do once, to touch fire. At these times, betrayed by the world, he ran with tears in his eyes to the comfort of mother. With each smart, another bit of innocence was forever lost. And so Tom grew, as every child.
He expanded his horizons and started to play with other children in the neighborhood. The games at that age invented themselves, and the days seemed to last forever. He had no sisters of his own and so discovering girls was a special wonder. They played different than the boys. Sometimes he joined them. Other times he ran with the boys. They travelled like a pack, exploring the woods and shorelines, and climbing trees. To Tom, that was the best fun of all, the thrill of climbing trees. The boys ran and jumped, wrestled and pushed. There were scuffed hands and knees, but one learned quickly to not cry for long. It was not tolerated for long within the pack. The bigger boys were the leaders, and set the challenges. One day,a bigger boy pushed Tom to the ground, for no particular reason, other than that he could. Of all the loses of innocence,this was the greatest,and left the most enduring mark.