Childhood to Childhood

My immediate response to any question about my childhood experience is to shut my eyes. Following this closing, my mind opens to imagine all that I sensed in the spaces where I felt safe enough to experience ‘play’.

 I close to eyes to remember the sights, the smells, tastes, sounds, and textures.

Those spaces where I felt safe were usually within nature, and when there wasn’t any foliage, it was at home. The nomadic nature of my family made it difficult for me to establish a zone in which I acquired the level of comfort built off of time within a singular place. Because of this, most of my experiences were with my sister and/or with fairies. After gathering an assortment of twigs, leaves, and flowers, Allia and I would work for hours during the day to construct houses for the fairies, and hoped that they would emerge to use it once the sun dipped down; sometimes we would leave cake inside to lure them in. I didn’t want to believe that the world survives without fairies, their inanimateness would make my existence far too futile. And so I continued to persist in their presence, even though I knew they would never reveal themselves to me.

Fairies seem now as though they were my religion. I made offerings to them, and had faith in their being, even when I couldn’t see them.

As far as I can tell, we move from childhood to childhood, always learners, always playing—though the manifestation shift.