Musings
From The Heart
An
Essay A Day For A Year
By
Roe
Day
128 May 7, 2012
Growing
Up Without A Childhood
When I was a little boy, I
never got to be a little boy. I am the son of two post war Germam immigrants to
America, and I was raised in the Hitler youth tradition of wunder-boy-uber-alles,
the wonder boy that had to be better than everyone. This is a wunder way to
steal the childhood away from any child.
Since I was a little boy, I have seen 10’s of thousands of little boys
and little girls, including and especially your little boys and girls, and I
have yet to see a child that had a true childhood, even children who were
raised by decent parents. The closest I have ever come to witnessing a real
childhood was at Summerhill School in England, the world infamous
do-as-you-like “free school”, where I have had the privilege to live for a time
and witness true childhood. At
Summerhill School class attendance is optional, there are no chores, and since
the children govern the school in the weekly meeting, there is no ban on any
kind of behavior whatsoever, except adherence to laws that the children
themselves enact. Children at Summerhill School are approved of to be just like
they are, without any cohersion of or molding or any kind from adults. The
tragedy of Summerhill School is that it is a boarding school in the English
tradition, and the children grow up away from their parents.
I wish I could have grown up
as a Summerhillian, free to be who I am, yet I also would wish to be with my
parents. I really liked my parents, my Mom was so beautiful, and my dad so
handsome. I used to think when I was a
little boy that they were Gods, they were far handsomer a couple then John and
Jacqueline, who we adored in Camelot. I felt like I lived in Camelot when I was
a little boy, our house was a showpiece since my dad was a German carpenter,
and you could have eaten off of the floors, as they say, my mom kept house so
well. We kids, my younger sister
Michelle and I, were always impeccably dressed, and my “german” family set an
example for the whole neighborhood.
Despite the fact that my parents were grateful and proud to be brand new
“Americans”, we at home were thought to be superior to the other Americans,
since we had better table manners, we worked harder and put more effort into life
and the quality of things, and we cared more, or so my parents believed.
In truth my family was just
a façade of euro superiority and cleanliness, and just a typical, old school,
family abuse asylum, with virtually total soul murder effected upon my sister
and I. I can gratefully say that I was not sexually abused, and I was not
overtly beaten or, on the surface, tortured, but the sickness of being children
during WWII, with hideously abusive parents, followed my beautiful parents
across the atlantic, and when no one was looking, my sister and I were chiseled
at and crushed down until we became supposedly perfect “subjects” of my
parents’ regime.
Child abuse is so widespread
as to be completely normal in our world, and it exists in every family in the
world to one degree or another. I suffered more than most people, yet less than
some. My mother was a wire cage of a mother, serving and beautiful, but
maternally vacant. She worked the good
cop, bad cop Germanic soul murder scythe with my explosive father perfectly,
and “wait until your father comes home” was the motto of my childhood
home. My father believed in “respect”,
and he filled our home with the great books that he never read, and he did everything
so that others would respect his high standing. He cared so much and tried so
hard that he would become overwhelmed by
his own enthusiasm and lack of patience, and explode into tirades often enough
to keep the family terrified. Ambition for my father was working hard enough
out there and doing everything for himself, in the guise as if it was for us,
as to not really ever notice that he was not fathering at all. My father was an intense Gestapo captain,
always concerned about how he might look, and forgetting our childhoods like
his was forgotten.
Childhood is about
worshipping and loving the parents that worship and love you right back. Childhood
is about not having a care in the world except that you don’t have a care in
the world. Childhood is about feeling
that you matter to your parents, and feeling that you are approved of and
accepted as you are. Childhood is about play, and having all the time in the
world to do nothing but play, and when you do have time for other things that
matter, you do it playfully. Childhood is about feeling safe, and feeling liked
and valued and welcomed. Childhood is about being heard and feeling listened
to, and about having a voice. Childhood
is about knowing that your parents care enough to make you the most important
part of their lives. Childhood is about fun and happiness and joy and hugs and
lots and lots of affection and praise. I’m afraid that I did not benefit from
one single, beautiful dream of childhood listed above, and I would wager that
you might have had only one or a couple yourself.
Childhood is not about
lessons, for all life lessons come in time.
Childhood is not about manners, for all good manners come in good
time. Childhood is not about school, for
any free and passionate children with free and passionate and educated parents
becomes free and passionate and educated in time themselves, without school. Childhood is not about chores
and responsibility, for responsibility and chores come soon enough as young
adults. Childhood is not about bugging
or berating or yelling or hitting or punishment or mistreatment of any kind
from parents. All children have a healthy conscience and need for harmony and
repair themselves in time. Childhood is not about abuse, physical, or
emotional, or sexual, and if you are a parent that hits your child, or teases
and taunts and verbally tortures you child, or if you allude to or insinuate or
live out any form of sexuality with your child, you are very sick, and you must
find someone else to care for your child while you seek help.
I miss the childhood that I never
had, and I still try daily to live out the joys that were denied me. How about you? Or if you had a decent childhood with the
usual problems or others, how are you doing or how will you do with your children? We all hope to do better than our parents
did, and our parents said the same thing, despite having fallen short in our
eyes, and in fact actually falling short. You CAN just fish all day, and you
CAN play dolls with your child right now, and they WILL grow up great just
having fun ALL day. There is no such
thing as growing up without an education, for being a happy and loved child
that is free to be themselves to play, next to the fun loving parent that
values the childhood of their child, is infinitely superior to a graduate
degree at Harvard. We were all sold a million silly and stupid lies, and when
we were children we looked up at our parents and thought: “Are you
kidding?” Now we believe those lies, now
we send our children to school, we make them do their chores, we remind and
hound and annoy our children until we and they are sick, and ironically just
like our parents did to us, and supposedly “for their own good. We don’t have a
clue what that even means since we have never had it any other way. For our
children’s good is to let them simply be children, and get off their backs.
It is time to turn off the
Tv, turn off the computer, turn off the cell phone, turn off the video games,
turn off the car, turn off the myriad distractions, fire the teachers, fire the
baby sitter, and tell the “friends” of your kids that Mom and Dad want to be
with their kids and play with their kids. It is time to return to what we all
dreamed of as kids right now, and sit down eye to eye with your own kids and just
laugh and play and have awesome and silly and useless fun. Every healthy and wonderful, loving and kind,
compassionate and caring person in our world has a lifetime full of funny and
playful and awesome, silly and useless experiences with their wonderful
parents. The rest of us that didn’t have
fun and kind parents know exactly what we are doing with all our expectations
and blah, blah, blah at our children, just like our faulty parents did, and we
still struggle with our less than wonderful lives, just like they did. There is no time like right now to allow your
children that childhood that they deserve, and that you miss so much. Have fun and give them a hug for me.
See you tomorrow
yourpersonalmuse@gmx.com
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