Free write 16: Child

Being a child, what do I think of?  I think a lot about In Living Color, and how I always ate slowly on Sunday nights just so I could stay up and watch that show, and A tribe called quest and their CDs which I stole from my brother and sister, and I think of ice cream trucks that used to speed up just so neighborhood kids could run for them and they served soft serve ice cream and real sundae’s and there were spaghetti nights and Chinese food nights on Thursdays and movies Sundays in autumn because it was so cold to do anything else, and wedging myself between my brother and sister for warm when we ran out of blankets.  I think digable planets and common and run dmc, the time hip hop was fun and intellectual before it eroded into rap.  I think of a time when the greatest joy was to be home alone so I could put food coloring in everything, and take long baths and listening to the radio late at night so I could hear the quiet storm program, which there is now a station dedicated to it, which still doesn’t seem like the stuff of childhood because the fun was listening to it in bed and wondering…what went through other people’s minds when they turned to that station.

 I think a little bit of Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary.  Of Nancy Drew which I could never get into.  Of classes and field trips and the long walks where I carried bottles of water because I was scared to death of passing out.  Of taste of Chicago and fireworks, of swimming in the lake and being frightened if I touched a fish scale, of good times and reading my mother stories, of pouring through library books and encyclopedias to learn the mysteries of puberty, like, why did my chest itch so much?  And that was only manual that give me answers. 

 Often times I think of Zillions magazine and how I begged my father to get subscription to that, of soul food especially soul by the pound which does not exist anymore, or busting fire hydrants because we couldn’t go into the ymca swimming pool, or goofing around in the park or on the slide or slipping onto a fence.  Making my own outfits and my parents nicknaming me Blossom because of how bizarre they were.  Studying hard for standardized tests.  Sharing poems with my teachers because I knew my classmates would laugh at me.  Not knowing the difference between meet and meat for the longest time.  I don’t think much of playground games, but I do remember spending endless hours on the phone about silly things, like, she said what?  And not so silly hours talking to my dad about how things were in life.

 Part of me thinks I want to go back to childhood but the only was I can think of returning there is by having a child myself.  That way, I could se what the adult world looks like through their eyes, but I think that’s the wrong reason to have a kid.  I wonder if I trust as much, love as much, care as much as I did as a kid, and I think that I do. And strangely enough, I regret that part of me hasn’t matured to the best standard that there is now.  Maybe I miss everything being new and familiar at the same time, loving and cruel, understanding and misunderstanding at the same time and not knowing it.  Now I do, but all I’m left with is, what to do with all this experience?  Where do my sad, washed up, used up longings go?  Where can nostalgia be pure, and candied and bittersweet, besides, as nostalgia? Do they get returned, or matured, or saved for the next generation?  Perhaps they do, but mine are saying return to sender, return those useless feelings and let me hold on to my youth, my happy youth, my new youth, just for a second, for one more precious second before work, school, writing, the present invade my psyche with its momentous demands and precarious involvements.