I ran across this comment, or lament, somewhere and it touched a nerve with me because there sure have been times when I wished I were 10 years old again, when I've thought that nothing since puberty has been worth growing up for. To be eternally in the Garden of Eden of childhood would be heaven.
Oh, I know for many people childhood was hell -- they'll tell the world, you can bet on that. But for me and many others it wasn't, and why should their unhappiness carry more weight than our happiness?
Anyway, while I was thinking about how pleasant it would be to live again those sunny childhood days, a light breeze rippling the leaves of the trees of times past, it occurred to me that when I actually was a child, maybe my parents were wishing they were back in their happy childhoods and would rather not be parents and dutiful adults, dealing with all the grown-up crap, the responsibilities, the necessity to just grin and bear it, whatever it was...you know how it is. Some days are good, a few even very good indeed, but the older I get, the more I am likely to think as I wake up in the morning what's going to go wrong today? What disaster is awaiting me? What am I going to have to deal with before I can slip back under the covers again?
So I think back to the best days of my childhood, forgetting all that was not so good, all the fears and anxiety and uncertainty of those days, most especially wondering what I would grow up to be. But the more I think about those days, the more I remember of the reality of being a child, not in control of anything, not understanding a lot, being compelled to do things I didn't want to do....
I often spent summers with relatives, usually my grandparents, my mom and dad not wanting me to grow up isolated and unused to America, we living overseas for most of my childhood. I looked forward to those summers on the ranch, with my own horse and dogs, the freedom to roam the wide open spaces, the beauty and interest of nature. I loved my grandmother and was always excited to see her. I thought the world of her and I thought that she thought the same of me.
But one day I guess I was being especially rambunctious, probably got on her nerves pestering her, though I didn't realize it, just being a happy kid, and she whacked me on the heinie with her house slipper, telling me to settle down and behave and stop making a nuisance of myself.
Now the smack to my hind end startled me. It didn't really hurt physically, it just got my attention, as you might say. But her telling me that she thought I was a nuisance shocked me to the core. I was stunned. Something deep inside me broke. I loved her unconditionally, as only a child can love, and I thought she loved me, too. But that wasn't so. She just considered me a nuisance. She probably didn't even want me around and didn't like me coming to stay with her. What a fool I was to have thought she loved me. But now I knew. I was just a nuisance.
After that, my relationship to her, and my grandfather, changed. I was subdued, rarely spoke. The days of me chattering away at meal times, hanging out in the kitchen asking questions and trying to help, were over. After breakfast I disappeared, saddling my horse and riding off, a couple of dogs running with me, and did not come back till well after dark, which in the summer meant 11 or 11:30 at night. When I got home, my grandparents were both still up, though they usually retired around 10. It didn't occur to me that they were worried about me, because all they ever said was it's about time you showed up, your supper's cold.
Other days, I would stick around but just do my chores, taking care to do them exactly right. If told what to do, I would just do it in silence.
I realize now that I was wildly over-reacting, pouting over nothing. But to me at that time, it was not nothing. It was everything. And my grandmother had given me a valuable lesson about life: it doesn't center around you, and even with those you love and who love you, you have to be considerate, think how your behavior affects them. Common sense for an adult, but a child has to learn it. Eventually, I came to realize that. But it took a while.
Another bad, to me anyway, experience of childhood was my grandfather teaching me how to shoot. As I've written before, he was a stern man and I was a little afraid of him. He wasn't mean, but he expected obedience. He was a career naval officer, an aviator, had been wounded several times in the Pacific War, been shot down at sea and not rescued for 37 days, flew combat missions during the Korean War and the Viet Nam war as well, and had survived many harrowing experiences. I didn't know all that at the time. I just knew he was a formidable presence you did not disobey in either word or action.
So anyway, he decided that I needed to learn how to handle firearms and use them effectively. I didn't like guns and didn't want to have anything to do with them. They were cold pieces of metal, they were loud, and people used them to kill animals with. I hated them.
But gramps told me some day I might have need of a firearm and I should be adept. So he taught me and I learned. And not only did I learn to shoot with precision and accuracy at stationary and moving targets, I learned that the best way to get through a task you don't want to do but have to is not to delay and resist, be stubborn and recalcitrant, but to dive into it with your whole will and just do it. Get it done. Accomplish it and put it behind you. That is the real skill my grandfather taught me, not how to use a gun. And how valuable that skill has proven to be.
Where am I going with all this? Oh, nowhere I guess, other than that the dream of a idyllic childhood is -- wait for it! -- a meretricious chimera. Haha.
Oh, and that remembering it reminds me to be careful when dealing with my own children. A casual word spoken out of annoyance can have profound affects not only in that day but throughout their whole lives. I have to think what I am saying to them from their point of view. Not so I don't hurt their feelings so much as in what lessons my words might teach them. I need to be aware of that. I want their childhood memories to be as good as I can make them while I am also teaching them how to be adults and make it through this most imperfect, and often quite unfriendly world.
