childhood is over?

what about the fields and the birds? I'm still waiting for them.

We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it, if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass, the same hips and haws on the autumn hedgerows, the same redbreasts that we used to call ‘God’s birds’ because they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known and loved because it is known?

A quote from The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot, which is declaimed by Jo, in “Little Women”

I have never been close to my childhood. I’ve known, or at least bound, that this hole in my heart had to do with the grown woman I’d someday be, leaving for somewhere like Scotland or Norway, where the fairies might be freer. When I looked across the ocean and captured the horizon, I sought the future, never the past.

If I was to categorize most of the people I know, I’d say most men are inclined to the sorrows and nostalgia of the past, whereas most women had always been straightforward, clawing at the desperation of a future where they’d be free. If I had to guess, I’d say that for men there’s always a place to be victim, for they are not used to being marred for the body they carry. Women don’t have that space; we have to carve ourselves in the far corner of the frame, to be something.

Isn’t it so unfortunate that none of us ever live in the present?

I, as a girl who’s obsessed with history and the idea of it, have done the same. A step in the future, in the hopes that it’d one day be a worthy and legendary past. So that I’d be a visceral story to tell. But I’m always so immersed into my reveries, I’d forgot to trace the line of my present as also being a part of who I am.

So, no. I don’t think about how it was to be a child, because it mostly just edges on the lack of the brilliance of infancy I still don’t know if I ever had. I’ve always shirked from kids. I dodge the topic mostly with the excuse that it’s boring to me. And I ignore that perhaps the fact that I dream so much of living fully in a remote place where the sun beckons the birds, the trees swing with the winds of rain and there are children being embraced by the comforting chill of the river, is because I have always desire to be those children.

As a child growing up in the biggest metropole of my continent, there was no time amongst the never-ending rush for me to free my body of the chains I didn’t know existed. I had always had the urge to dance and flip in the air, but for some reason I didn’t feel free enough to do it, since there were always four walls around me. I wanted to play with the dirt, but concrete was stolid. And I wanted to ramble about everything and anything and tread around sparkling like a fairy, but there was never anyone to talk to or glimpse at the sweet innocence of being a girl.

I was always desperate to be a part of something, because we lived with no intention. No heartfelt tradition and companionship. Everything was always hollow and I’m still gauging at the creeks to find meaning.

And then adolescence came too fast. I’m fifteen now and my mom told me, “I never treated you like a child.” Her tone was apologetic, as if she was saying, “I’m sorry I did that to you.” I don’t think she should be. I remember once picking limes as the sun creeped lower and lower on the fields, me, her and my aunt. We were away for a holiday and it’s one of the few memories I have of just spending time in the serenity of life. Of just feeling like I had time.

And I recall I was eager to be engaging on their adult conversation, because I had no friends there and my free boy cousin was playing with his free boy friends, probably video games. I thought it was horrific no one wanted to climb a tree with me, but I didn’t know how to, so I didn’t go. The only thing left was to be the grown up of the children. The thing that’d stab me in the back a few years later is that grown ups are not free.

In the expanse of four years, my friends and I are teenagers; and we don’t go swimming in the pool anymore. Because we’re ashamed of the shape of our bodies and because we have responsibilities that we will not fulfill, only keep them there lurking on the corner and rot our minds out.

We don’t run, we don’t dance, we don’t jump, we don’t go rolling down in the fields. We stay upright, with a flinch to our muscles, being who we think we need to be.

I keep reading my grown up books that I love, but always give me reading slumps. Because I want to read my fantasy. I want go far away from here, where people are free to use their magics. To feel bodies. To fly. To dance. To fall. And the chill to their bellies is welcoming.

The paralysing fear I have when I try to somersault is not welcome. Or when I’m going to play volleyball. Or when I dance. Because those four walls are still around me, limiting me of being who I want to be, who I can be. Both tangibly and abstractly.

And when I watch Little Women and Jo says, “I can’t believe childhood is over,” I think to myself that her childhood, that is so precious and comforting to me in that movie, is playing theater with her sisters (expressing themselves), it has a singular color palette (warm tones of autumn), it is people and music and hearths and warm teas and christmas mornings. There was intended memory. There was space to evolve those four girls.

I miss that childhood I never had. I never got home and there were three girls or anyone waiting for me with a burst of words at the tip or their tongue so that our time together would always be filled with the chaotic glimpse of love and friendship. I remember the chirping of the birds began to fade over the years and my father would not tend to the tiny piece of earth we had on the backyard and so I wouldn’t watch the worms anymore. Nature was so foreign to me. I think it still is. But I remember being drawn to it, whenever I could.

When Jo comes home and she says to Beth, “I miss it all,” my heart aches because I miss it, too. I watch that movie and I miss those moments of pure life I never had.

Someday I’d like to do what Violet Bridgerton did. For all of her children, she gardened a family, by blood and by outside love. She did not have that, so she build it. I think in the name of her younger version, perhaps.

So, how to speak about my childhood? I am grateful for it, I was always safe and had food to eat and was cared for as far as anyone needs to be. But there was no space for that child to express herself, to speak and, in that speaking, recognize herself. Maybe that’s one of the reasons I marvel so much at the thought of someone knowing me, my deepest desires and feelings. Because they come from her. Because they are hidden in her and it would take honorable effort to scoop them out. Because I hid them in her every time my mom would scold at me for trying to show her I was someone worthy of being listened to too, for trying to correct what I thought was unfair.

I don’t know who is that child. I should take my time to learn. What does she want? Who is she? What’s her biggest dream?

I think I should embrace her, because this fake mini adult that’s embarassed and afraid of their own shadow is crippling me. I should like to embrace those golden and amber curls, those crooked teeth I don’t have anymore, and those fingertips always desiring to touch the edge of the world.

From her, I want creeking branches and the melodies of birds. I want to grow fields of flowers and run through like she never could. I want to dance amongst the trees and summon beings of love. I want laughter and tradition and commitment. For her to know that there will always be people that chose her and she chose them back. For there to be intention and legacy and people and expected christmas mornings.

I want her to be her own person. Love and be loved with intention. And I’ll always miss in my childhood what I’ll gather for her in the future.

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