The Richness of Childhood

Driving out to East Nowhere today to get our old spare tire patched, so we could put it on our car, I asked Husband why we were getting it patched rather than simply buying a new tube for the tire. He looked at me kind of funny and said, "I don't think these new tires have tubes any more."

By "these new tires," of course, he meant simply to be nice to me. Since Michelin developed tubeless tires in the early 1900s, it's not clear to me when car tires stopped containing inner tubes, but it might have been about a year or two after the last time I spent the entire afternoon bobbing in the Gulf of Mexico on one of those tubes while my sisters hunted shells on the beach.

This is one of my very fondest memories. Visiting my grandparents in Florida, we would all go to the beach -- all except Grandma, who hated with water. We would collect giant buckets full of shells...tiny butterfly shells in pearlescent pink and lavendar and blue, scallop shaped shells in burgundy or brown, creamy shells shaped something like a miniaturized conch, but with a long nearly pointed tail, the best of which were lined in pink. We would build castles, swim, and on really good days, I would get the giant black inner tube. Draping my arms over the sides of the tube, and dropping my body down through the middle, I would hang in the water weightless, solitary, left to think my own thoughts. Enjoying the gentle cadence of waves, the sensation of being a creature unto myself, free from the squeals on the beach, the swimmers, the castles, the family, the conversation, the expectations, the togetherness, I would close my eyes and give myself up to becoming a part of the ocean.

Nowadays, I can't imagine parents letting a child of seven or eight float off on her own inner tube in the ocean for hours at a time. I could swim, certainly. But I couldn't control the currents. And yet, in the 1970s, we were apparently blissfully free of such concerns. And thus I could hang and float and daydream to my heart's content.

Of course, on the way down to Florida, we did plenty of other things no one would conceivably allow a child these days to do. For our chocolate brown boat-sized Buick, my father built a foam covered bench to fill the space between the back seat and the front. Not constrained by the inconvenience of seatbelts, my two sisters and I were free to practice our somersaults (oh, yes, we actually did), stretch out for long naps or book reading, and generally cavort on a vast plain of quilt-covered playground.

And this has me thinking about all the other fondest memories of my childhood that could simply never happen today. Many of them are road trip memories: riding in the way back of the station wagon, sitting sideways on the bench seat, and doing Mad Libs; or lying on my belly on the flat bed of sleeping bags created on the folded down back seats, getting lost in the romance of Jane Eyre at the age of 9 or 10.

Or what about walking to school? We moved into a new neighborhood when I was 11. I walked the mile to school the first morning with a neighbor who lived down the street, but she (annoyed, I think, at having to shepherd me around), took me back and forth to school the first few days by three different routes -- and then abandoned me to find my way home alone the following afternoon. I figured it out just fine (if with a little panic in my veins). But I was ELEVEN. Alone. A mile from home. Without a cell phone. And it didn't occur to anyone that I couldn't make it back. So I did. My sisters walked to school too. Their elementary school was closer than the middle school, and there were two of them together. But still, it was about 1/2 a mile they went each way each day, and no one thought twice of letting them do that in the 3rd and 4th grades respectively.

I realize that "times have changed," as trite as that statement is. Of course, we know more about child predators than was public in the 1970s; we have a clearer sense of the dangers of riding unrestrained in cars (and plenty of legislation to insist that we protect ourselves); we many of us live in neighborhoods where we do not actually know most of our "neighbors." Rather than the community in which I grew up, where everyone in every house knew everyone else in every other house "around the block," we live now much more indoors -- far less street roller skating, adolescent games of Kick the Can until 10pm, and walking uninvited into each other's houses to find a playmate.

In many many ways, our children today are so much safer than we were. I shudder to think what would have happened had we ever had a car accident while tumbling around in the back seat of the Buick.

And yet, there is such a find line between safety and over-protectiveness, and there is something in me that feels a longing tug for the days when it was all right to let an eight-year-old have time alone on the calm ocean just to BE. I treasured those afternoons bobbing in the waves where I didn't have to be accountable, responsible, or anything but dreamy. And I wonder where and how my children will carve out spaces for their own contemplative moments. Perhaps they, like me, will seek refuge in the high branches of a tree with a good book. Then again, we do not have a suitable tree in our yard. We didn't back when I was a child either, but that didn't matter because the Gladds did -- a giant magnolia, which any of us who could climb were welcome to use as a seat, a playhouse, a book nook, or a refuge. In our neighborhood now, we are so far from considering our front yards as community green space, or an exension of our always-open doors welcoming neighbors into our homes, that one would not dream of climbing a neighbor's tree unless specifically invited to do so during a party at said neighbor's house.

We hear laments from our own parents about how things were "simpler" back when they were in school. Simpler, safer, freer. It is true that they (and we) could be safely sent outdoors after lunch with instructions to "be sure to be home by dinner," no other checking in required. It is also true that I cannot imagine giving my own children those instructions. Or that freedom.

Contemplating that tonight makes me somewhat sad. I want my children to have the chance to stand outside in the heat of the June sun, and listen to cicadas, and just go for a walk. I want them to participate in activities, to try sports, to explore the arts, but I do not want them to be perpetually scheduled or to have their every move constantly monitored. Because, I want them to learn the valuable skill of entertaining themselves. I want them to be independent as well as social, to be creative and thoughtful, to thrill with exploration, and to appreciate moments of quiet.

I am not completely sure how I will give them this gift, but I am determined that as they grow, they too will have the opportunity to find themselves in the power of their own silence, floating contentedly on an ocean of possibilities.