The days that childhood is made of

I hope!

Looking back into my childhood, I remember summers best. I remember weeks in caravans, sleeping in awnings, the summer of ’76 when my sister got heatstroke and threw up down the hallway 😉 I guess I do remember winters as well (notably the one where the road got snowed in, and the fire engine couldn’t get up to the chimney fire), but they aren’t the bits I choose to revisit, iyswim.

So this weekend we went over to Jan’s place. Coincidentally, it’s just up the road (less than half a mile up the road!) from where I grew up. Maybe that was the other detail that dropped me back to childhood this evening. Yesterday the children played, which was a large part of why we’d gone over, and Tim and I went window shopping for houses. It was a good trip – gloriously sunny day, we drove around some local villages, and stopped for a drink in one. He liked it (the drink 😉 ), and the village as well, so it looks like we may be working on a plan now. That would be good.

Then back to Jan’s for tea and more beer, and eventually some hours without children. It’s good to be with friends whose only reaction to your other half falling asleep and snoring on the floor, is to try to sit a cat on his chest 😀

It’s relaxing there, we all enjoy it. And this morning we did something that I think we all enjoyed. We walked up on to the moors, followed a stream to a pool, and paddled and made a dam. It was great, and we were up there a good couple of hours, all of us playing and building together, hot sun and cold water. It was good.

I am very painfully aware that if my children were to write “where I’m from” the thing that is said to them most is probably ‘not now, I’m working’, or maybe ‘in a minute’ that usually stretches to well more than 5. I don’t want them to remember their childhood like that. I want them to remember sunny days building dams, all the books they read, tents in the garden, holidays with friends in fields. I want them to have a fantastic happy background that gives them inner strength and self reliance as adults. Happy memories of happy times, of being loved, and having fun.

So today was good. And I need to remind myself that early childhood days don’t last forever. I can’t keep on telling myself that children are resilient, and that I have time, because one day, I won’t.

Today was a good day. Tomorrow will be good too.