Trapped in the Present?

Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
page 55

"No matter how hard you try to be what you once were, you can only be what you are here and now. When you are nine years old, you think you have always been nine. When you are thirty, you think the same thing. And when you are seventy, you think you have always been seventy. You are in the present. You are trapped in a young now or an old now, but there is no other now to be seen." 



     I know this is a strange quotation which doesn't seem to make much sense, so I will explain the context of it. The novel Dandelion Wine takes place in a small town called Green Town, Illinois, in the summer of 1928. Some children in the town have been teasing an old lady named Mrs. Bentley; they know she is seventy years old and can not believe that she was ever a child like they are now. Mrs. Bentley insists that she was indeed once a child like they are; she even shows them some things she had when she was little (pictures, books, clothing), but the kids just don't want to believe it. 
     This makes her upset and she starts thinking about the way that time works. Mrs. Bentley realizes that people have a hard time remembering what they were like when they were a different age from what they are now. In other words, when somebody is nine years old, he/she can't remember being any younger than that. It seems to Mrs. Bentley that she is trapped in the present time at the age of seventy. 
     At the end of this chapter, she gives away all the stuff that she had when she was young and just accepts that she is old. She feels as though she was never ever a young girl! It's kind of a sad turning point for her; however, she decides that she can accept herself the way she is, wrinkles and all!