childhood
I don't know if I ever had a childhood. childhood is like "once upon a time" in that it's more a mythical interval than a real time, it's a time after you can walk and run and turn cartwheels and do somersaults, it's a time when you can get away from grownups and just have a wonderful time and then reappear in time for lunch or maybe supper, it's a time when you're perfectly willing to run to an adult - a mommy, I assume - and tell her "you know what I did?" then tell her what you did without fear of punishment, and a time when you recognize that not everything you do is to be shared with grownups because they don't have the imagination to recognize it as an adventure. childhood is a special and a magical time. if I ever had one it happened when I was three, four, and five, or maybe just four and five. you may remember: I was born in Albuquerque, stuff happened, then I was two-and-a-half, and we moved to Brasil, and my parents spent some time intensely learning something resembling Portuguese (my father) and a patois that let her get along (my mother). I don't know that that was done on purpose, but that is what happened. then in my memory, we moved to a little town so small that I could walk across it hanging on to my father's finger, and so small that I could slip out of the edge of it and be in brush dense enough that grownups didn't see me until I was ready to reappear. that's when I think I had a childhood. my father was gone most of the time, doing whatever horrible things missionaries do to people kind enough to welcome them and invite them into their communities. my mother was busy taking care of a baby girl and growing a baby boy and running a house with servants who spoke a language she didn't but who did their damnedest to help her communicate even though they had no idea what she thought a house was supposed to look like and act like. (she had grown up in the middle class in Louisiana; northeastern Brasil had nothing like what she was accustomed to, and she had no way to explain it, she could only show them what she wanted and she wasn't supposed to do that. the world can be a horrible place, especially if you're a woman.) which let me escape, first into our back yard, then when I noticed that no one watched me and there was an exit from our back yard, I could escape into a larger world, the brush outside town. ooo! animals I didn't know and who didn't know me. snakes! oddly shaped trees. I think I once found a skull, but I'm not sure of that. I did find a cave, but I've written of that elsewhere - it was a wonderful cave! every little boy should find one and get away with exploring it! I could hide at the edge of the brush and see men riding horses and working from horseback or getting off, working, and getting back on. yes, if I ever had a childhood, that was it! and then it was gone! that's what happens to childhood, I think. in our case, we moved into a big town where I had some adventures I wasn't supposed to, then we went back to "the States" for a year that turned into a year and a half. I was introduced to school and learned to hate it. we came back to Brasil, but not to our little town. we stayed in Recife where I was re-introduced to school and learned not to hate it. my adventures were reduced to walking home out of the way I was supposed to walk. then all of a sudden we left Brasil and went to "the States" again only for keeps that time. I was about twelve then, so anything like childhood was out of the question. I had to crossover into being a teenager with no preparation at all for being a teenager, not even the right language. it all worked out, I think. I sorta caught up with my fellow teenagers and did the things teenagers weren't supposed to do, managed to survive grownups again, graduated from high school and started college. it was a busy time, and now fifty-plus years later, I look back at that time I call childhood and wonder at it, amaze at it, and appreciate it.
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