DAY 503

longing

The tide was turning and the boys were challenging the waves, dancing with the ebb and flow. They were excited as if no one were brave enough to do the same. They were proud of themselves as if they were the first to discover how to play with the coming and going of the sea.

They seemed to be undaunted. And fearless. And careless. And ingenuous (I have grown by the sea and one needs great doses of naivety and a pinch of courage to play that way).They seemed not to have one concern in this world and all the grace coming from that gift.

This made me feel certain yearning and I started to wonder -once again- how a safe childhood would be… the sort of childhood that allows a child to have a feeling of wild boldness and blind confidence.

I kept my walk, taking photos here and there while the sun was setting. The air became cooler and the sea was like a silver carpet. I kept my walk till the end of the promenade and went back to this same point where the rising tide had already covered the breakwater. The boys had vanished, but my heart still wanted to know.

Every time I think of my childhood I can glimpse some splashes of pure bliss and perceive genuine hope, but all my memories of that time come along with a trace of pain. My life, my studies and my work have taught me that such thing called safe childhood rarely exists, that my story is one among millions of similar stories and is not one of the worst, not at all.

In fact, every childhood is a fragile territory that can be ruined easily because we have to join up with a group that exists before us and has its own stories of transgenerational traumas and successes. An unknown territory where we arrive without maps and often becomes a labyrinth. A training territory where masters and tyrants are sometimes mixed up. And –to sum up- an old territory that will always be reinvented just because every child is a new, unique and unpredictable human being and this creates unexpected dynamics: some terrible, some unpleasant, some disturbing, some delightful and marvelous and gratifying.

I have got to know persons with all kinds of childhood experiences and I have come to understand that the most important thing is the way we choose to respond to those experiences and the personal determination not to be defined by them, no matter how they were.

So time ago I decided to learn from my childhood, to embrace this vulnerability and realized that I prefer showing it to pretending that it doesn´t exist. This made a great difference in my life. Indeed, I am quite sure that things I love more of myself and my existence today are here thanks to the way I have coped with my early experiences, thus, I don´t complain.

However, from time to time this sterile query finds me again. This crazy wish undermines my mood. This senseless thinking captures my mind. And I cannot help asking myself –once again- how a safe childhood would have been...


Cross-posted at Vision and Verb on Friday. Many other women share their passion for creativity and words there, please visit us, it is a wonderful site 

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