Just so we're clear.....I wasn't a princess growing up. I didn't get everything I asked for on my birthday or Christmas. There was a time when our tv broke and my parents didn't replace it. We didn't go to theme parks or the movies. I could count on one hand the number of times I was inside a movie theatre before I was 14. During the summer and on Saturdays, my mother fed us breakfast and turned us loose on the neighborhood with the stern admonition to not come back until lunch, unless one of us was bleeding.My "misspent" childhood involved building tree forts from lumber purloined from local building sites, catching crayfish from the stream, riding sleds willy-nilly down snow-covered sidewalks, playing football with the guys, spraining my fingers as I learned to ride a skateboard made from, imagine that a skate and a board, gathering fireflies into peanut butter jar lanterns and playing innumerable games of street hockey or kick the can late into the summer evening as the red and orange sunset-painted sky faded to star-speckled navy blue.
My sibs and I went on long family vacations in the summer, long in time and mileage. We traveled from the east coast to the mountain west. Camped in our pop-up trailer in the chilly rains of Glacier National Park and the arid heat of Monument Valley. We climbed up mountains and down into caves. We saw elk and moose, bison, antelope, snakes and spiders. We watched fireworks in Washington, DC on the 4th of July and learned to body surf the waves of the Atlantic Ocean from Rhode Island to North Carolina. I decided to become a forest ranger after spending some time in Mesa Verde National Park the summer I turned 13.Early childhood visits to grandparents meant squeezing three children and a dog into the folded-down back seat of Volkswagen Beetle. The same Beetle that ten years later would be the car I would learn to drive in. The purchase of a special-order van with bench seats when I was 10 meant there was finally room for everyone to lay down. Christmases were split between Grandma and Grampa in Rhode Island where a cellophane chain of lollipops adorned the kitchen doorjam and the extended family (50 or more strong) gathered for a Christmas Eve party complete with Santa Claus and Grandma and Papa in Maryland where trips to the library, museums and afternoon quiet time were de rigeur.
Summers in Rhode Island meant watching the sky for "enough blue to make a Dutch boy's pants," indicating it was clear enough to go the beach, where even in late August clothes were necessary for warming up after playing in the surf until your lips and fingernail beds were blue with cold. Summers in Maryland were perfumed with boxwood and roses from the gardens around my grandparent's house. We would walk down the road to a little store at the end to pick a piece of penny candy. I would spend afternoons sitting in the fork of a tree backyard reading my latest Nancy Drew book in the dappled shade. When I was a teenager, my Maryland grandparents moved back east to Virginia after a living in Utah for a time. They moved to a highrise condo and then visits to them were highlighted by the indoor and outdoor pools with hot tubs and high dives.School days were bookended by races down the hill in the morning, cinnamon toast in hand as we rushed to beat the tardy bell, brisk walks back home for lunch and a slow meanders home, dreading homework. I kicked cans, slid down and fell on icy sidewalks, found a snake and carried it all the way to school before it bit me.
My sister was my best friend and my worst enemy, occasionally at the same time. We invented games and told stories that no one else ever understood. At night we would read in the thin sliver of light that came through the bedroom door from the hallway until Mom or Dad would call up from the bottom of the stairs and then turn it off. Some days we were heroines saving the day, other days we needed Underdog to rescue us from Simon Bar Sinister and the "sticky stuff" on the floor of our closet. We laughed together and fought each other and one especially difficult time divided our shared bedroom in two with masking tape, dictating who could walk where with minscule trails demarcated carefully and strictly enforced.
I don't know if I can declare that my childhood was idyllic--I was punished and had to stay in the yard, or couldn't go swimming when my friends would be. But I don't remember it as boring, or dull, or limited. I remember it as an adventure that I lived joyfully and gleefully.
Which doesn't mean I don't have adventures now, but these days I am more circumspect and less likely to dash off for the fun of it. More likely to governed by needs than wants. But every so often, I find that I toss everything over, grab my children and head to beach or to chase down the end of rainbow, or watch a caterpillar grow into a butterfly. There is still joy, glee and wonder in my life; I just have to remind myself to look for it.
