Childhood stories

The light is just beginning to rise as I sit here in my black and white chair and write to you. I went to bed at at 10 pm and woke at 6 am to the sound of the water rushing over the dam that blocks the river below the road. It was a quiet roar. And now in the early morning I sit with a brief prayer and begin to write. Perhaps the writing itself is another kind of prayer, just as the hooking is, just as all making is, a prayer to the day if nothing else.

As I do this I am thinking of myself as a child. How I never thought about each new day as a new day but as a continuation of being. Reflection did not start until I was in grade seven or so when my teacher, Cyril O'Reilly, began playing records for us in English class and asking us what the lyrics meant. Before this I just was completely in the moment as children are. Sometimes I would go to bed at night excited to continue the game or the play the next day. After the records, my childhood friend and I began digging into things. We would lay on the couch and talk about things endlessly. That is one of the first times I remember really pondering.

I do remember, as a small child, questioning my father about the universe and his growing up and accepting whatever answers he gave me. After Mr. O'Reilly and the lyrics, it was less about accepting and more about questioning. I was growing into a teenager and thinking more on my own. I was curious and still listening, and my own opinions were beginning to form. I can see this now as a the time I began to grow away from my parents into myself.

I watched my own children do this as well. It is the natural progression of life. We begin with such deep and full attachment and to survive we must get ready to leave the nest. That often begins with forming our own beliefs and ideas about the world as I did. As a child I sat with my father night after night talking as he carved his ducks from soft pine wood and carefully painted their wings. Those conversations were the beginning of self discovery. Who he was as a child was one of my favourite subjects. I wanted to know about the place he lived, where he played, what his mother was like. And he told me again and again about building a dory and rowing it to Marticot Island, about his teachers and Father Fine, and what he could buy at the store for a nickel. I saw all this in my head as he spoke. I can still recall those pictures today and I hold them pretty close.

Just as I do the Neil Young lyrics we pulled apart in grade seven. By that time I was no longer at my father's knee in the evening. I was out walking the hills overlooking the beach with friends drinking Mountain Dew and laughing and carrying on. It was still a childhood, home by dark, but a different phase. I was growing into myself, laying in my own room reading. I had tucked away the Little House on the Prairie Books and was trading them in for grown up novels. Even then at that age I could feel myself becoming independent as my six older sisters had. Around that time they were all heading out west to Alberta. I was the only one left in the nest.

And a nest it was, perched shakily on a hill over looking the rough sea. Waves crashed on the black rocks day and night and the Spruce trees swayed above the beach. The windows rattled and I could hear the wind whistling through them. And no matter what went on in our house, for like any house it was not perfect, I felt safe and loved there. And for that I am so grateful because it gave me the foundation I needed to step away into my own opinions, my own ideas, my own life. I still think of myself as from that house, that home, that life. The view from that window is still my view. I grew into myself there in that place, and so much of that self is who I remain. And I am grateful for it, for all the love and attention, the friendships, the warm toast with butter, the church, the school, the rattling windows and my mom and dad.