For silence to be warm it must have the rhythmic cadence of a heartbeat, the soothing texture of a wave-washed beach, the sensual treble of a windblown kiss. For, silence’s richness lies in its soft embrace and most especially. . . in its patient acceptance of being repeatedly broken by those who need noise to feel alive.
Category Archives: Childhood
Being an adolescent is difficult enough – but when you have to compete for prime time attention with tripped out 30 years olds and the made-over crowd of the 45 plus . . . it must be down right annoying to be a contemporary teen.
It is difficult to be a good parent when our own unmet childhood needs subvert or take precedence over those of our children.
My whole childhood was spent being curious, analyzing, dreaming, creating, sketching. I was never lonely. Though the crime rate was significantly higher than today, I was never afraid to be alone in any part of our tough industrial city. I walked everywhere and nowhere for hours – discovering, observing and wondering – being sociable when encountering others but preferring silence. That no one recognized I had been gone most of a day pleased me. (Where adults are concerned, being invisible is sometimes a gift. . .)
Lacking physical prowess and coordination, I practiced sideline sportsmanship instead of sports. But despite being last chosen in playground activities and suffering from chronic daydreaming in class, I survived. . . with nary a syndrome nor a multifaceted deficit disorder applied to my child or adolescent being. Oddly, no one seemed perturbed by my being “different” – least of all, me.
By the age of 16, I was on my own – a stock clerk, living in a boarding house. . . blissfully being and becoming whatever it is we all become at one point.
And so. . . looking back. . . wondering as I have always done. . . What would my life have been? And who and what would I be now. . . if, like today’s hovered-over children, I had been forced to live a more ordained and most euphemistically called “normal childhood”?
There is no more vacuous statement than: “I am beautiful”.
Handwriting is to identity what keyboarding is to anonymity.
A well designed playground is one in which parents (if they must be there) play their role from the sidelines – i.e.: looking appropriately worried, waiting for the inevitable fall and cringing at the very moments most children screech with joy. At best, playgrounds of merit are those which have been designed with no parent presence in mind. Let “them who insists” on overseeing play – something about which they know nothing – stand – wishing they were home. . . where they should be anyway.
The childhoods many of us claim to have lost or missed are more often than not childhoods “myth’d”.
Limiter les enfants à l’enfance, les adolescents à l’adolescence, permet aux adultes de ne jamais leur ouvrir la porte à la vie adulte.
(Relegating children to childhood and teens to adolescence justifies blocking them entry into adulthood.)
When we see danger in everybody and everything, we instill fear in children. That, in turn, erodes their innate daring, curiosity and all manner of creative potential.
