Being a kid

One of the advantages of a peripatetic life is that your current living environment can bring you surprising life lessons. I am staying in a friend’s spare room dedicated to children’s books and toys, a wonderland for visiting grandchildren. But for this short moment in time, it is my room. On the shelves are hundreds of children’s books, most of which I have never read. I am kind of mystified by this, because, yes, I was a small child fifty-five or so years ago. But in 1960-ish, people didn’t have tempting bookstores, online shopping or the money to spend on children’s books, and I don’t remember too many on the shelves. There were a handful of English children’s history books from my Dad’s childhood (which were rather dilapidated so we rarely opened them.) The family collection also included The Little Engine that Could, various books by A. A. Milne and Dr. Seuss, and a story about an aunt taking her niece and nephew to the beach, with gorgeous illustrations. Overall, though, I learned to read so quickly that I think I jumped from being read Now We are Six and Madeline (and I am grateful for that and can hear my mother’s voice to this day), to my own reading of the Little House on the Prairie books, Nancy Drew mysteries, and fare like Little Women and Huckleberry Finn. I didn’t have an interest in fantasy or magic and/or it wasn’t encouraged. As a result, scanning these bookshelves (even if you subtract more modern fare) is like scanning a parallel but unlived childhood: The Secret Garden, A Little Princess, The Wind in the Willows, The Black Stallion, The Real Mother Goose, etc. Where do I start?

The other thing is that I never had any stuffed animals. Evidently, my grandmother convinced my mother that they were unsanitary.  I did have one doll with chin-length brown hair and eyes that closed, and grandma made some clothes for her as well as a Barbie later on.  But mostly, I had a formal “doll collection” of dolls that had been acquired on family trips (I remember an Amish couple, and one or two in Colonial dress.)  I also played with my mother’s Depression-era dollhouse, complete with miniature wringer washer and brown radio with a moving dial.  There is nothing really wrong with any of this, but as I look around my current room, with brightly colored stuffed birds lining the top of the bookshelf, hand puppets, and posters from The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, I feel an odd sense of loss. There is a playfulness and joy to this cornucopia of clutter, and a rich sense of delight in the process of being young.  I think I was an old person by the age of four or five, at arm’s length from childish things. By five-and-a-half I was in first grade, and I would continue to be pushed ahead academically in school, which tended to give me an analytical slant on books and experiences that perhaps my contemporaries were simply, well, experiencing.

Back in January of this year, there was an excellent article in The Atlantic called, “Why the British Tell Better Children’s Stories.”  Basically the thesis was that almost all of the great British children’s literature is fantasy, whereas American children’s stories tend to be history-based and moralistic. American kids, thanks in large part to Harry Potter, have a more wide-ranging set of choices these days. While I have put my toe in the water of fantasy in recent years by becoming much more open to my own intuitive, creative nature, the books around me this morning tell me that I have quite a long way to go to catch up with children fortunate enough to have dozens, even hundreds, of books on their shelves and toys in their hands…that is, if they ever take a break from their high tech devices…(!) And there have always been many children worldwide with no homes or books at all, children who grow up too fast for altogether different reasons.  May we all eventually have the opportunity, whether at 6 or 60, to just “be a kid.”