A Happy Childhood - Sept 29 2022

 

A Happy Childhood

Sept 29 2022

 

No one writes books

about a happy childhood.

 

Good parents

who are blameless.

Caring teachers

and watchful neighbours.

Friends

who are not bad examples

and don't lead you astray.

 

It seems ungrateful to say,

but mine really wasn't.

Not that I remember much.

Except, that is, for wanting to be grown up

as soon as possible.

 

Maybe it was the powerlessness

of a child

that weighed me down.

 

Or was it trouble fitting in;

feeling different

and distanced,

but too bewildered to know

what was really missing?

 

Or was I just an old soul

in a young body

who often stood apart?

 

So not great,

but also not entitled to complain.

All-in-all, a middling beginning to life;

so even though everything is material

mine

was hardly the stuff of novels.

 

It takes time

to grow into yourself.

And now, in my 2nd childhood

I'm happier.

Perhaps not book-length happy, either

but at least enough for a poem.

Not any more powerful

in a world that's getting worse

and I can't do anything about,

but enough control

over the day-to-day

to stay up late

eat ice cream

and be free to think

without a test at the end of term,

or recess spent

at the playground's edge

self-consciously looking on.

 

But now, I see unhappy kids

all around

who clearly need a hug.

Perhaps more of them than ever.

All budding authors, I can only hope,

who may very well grow up too fast

but will at least remember

better than me.

 

Who will write touching novels

the critics praise

and readers eat up.

Because everything thing is material,

even better sad.

 

Who will practice forgiveness

as hard as it is,

especially for themselves.

 

Who will learn to love;

and will, in turn

be loved by someone else.

 

This was the first sentence in a recent New Yorker article: “Recovering from a happy childhood can take a long time.” What a great opening line!

Without reading any further, I immediately thought who ever writes about a happy childhood? Which handed me the opening, and I just riffed from there.

I wouldn't say I was a particularly happy child. I had everything needed for happiness, there was no major trauma or privation, and there is no one to blame. Looking at my life from a distance, any casual observer would tick off all the “normal” activities and think it was pretty typical. Even though some crucial landmarks are missing, and that I didn't fit in like a typical kid at all. I can understand now that I'm neurodivergent, and how that changed everything: socially; experientially; developmentally. Yes, I might have benefited from more emotionally expressive touchy-feely parents,  but that was the culture of parenting back then. And who would expect anyone but superhuman parents to be able to manage as sensitive, neurotic, and precocious a child as me? Not to mention that my 2 older brothers did just fine. So, all in all, hardly a book-worthy kind of unhappiness!

We may envy the carefreeness of childhood, the sense of unlimited potential, the wealth of new experience. But for me, being grown up is better. I have more agency. More self-awareness. More resiliency. Still, as they say, too bad youth is wasted on the young!