Childhood, Ours Yours and Mine

Early, so early the first sounds of the city awakening are not audible yet, so early the faint whir of the hard drive and fans of the computer can be heard, I want to see if I can squeeze into the doorway of the day an account of some childhood memories. If it didn't make so much noise I'd dig out two letters I wrote to my country cousins indirectly begging to be invited up for the holidays, and quote them here. I've quoted one of them before on a message board and apparently it was so embarrassing not a word was offered in reaction. Maybe readers thought I'd made it up. Sometimes if one is too confessional with strangers tension sets in and glances are averted.

Those letters were written when I was ten. I have photocopies of the letters thanks to the kindness of one of those cousins who sent them to me when his mother died; she had kept them, much to my astonishment, since the letters are full of imaginary violence, presented as actual, and written about with lies, distortions, and wild boasting thinking to swell my cousins estimation of me and so invite me for a visit. My aunt came from a large family of boys so I guess, now, nothing dismayed her about boyhood braggadocio. (Perhaps later in the day I will edit this entry and include at least one of those letters to add a further note of truthfulness: the letters couldn't be faked; they are too outlandish and ridiculous, which is what makes them so extroadinrily valuable to me. Childhood is an incomparable mine of precious ore from which to smelt and craft one's present life.)

That same aunt sent me away five years later when I actually lived in her home after my mother died at age forty one. I was never told the reason. To my uncle, who broke the news, I complained, "I'm only a boy." He mocked me for a sissy. What they did was probably illegal, even then, and in that place, rural Australia, but that fact never occurred to me. I got over the shock quite early. I was definitely in shock however. I know because some of my hair fell out. I guess I was a tender, naive soul. Even after all this time, and much introspection, I'm still compelled to attempt even more self analysis.

Last night, late, my wife of nearly thirteen years casually mentioned some facts of her childhood, the same facts I knew but restated with more evident trust, of a kind that adds to my certainty that exploring one's own childhood searching for the motherlode can be most profitable for adult poise and self assurance. One's first reaction might be negative, since the facts have often been repressed, but that passes and is replaced by an odd sort of proud bemusement.

Barry