A Fantastic Childhood: a Recipe

If you had a fantastic childhood, and an Imagination…..the rest is pure gravy.

I don’t know anything else. I am the product of a near perfect childhood. I was an urban legend in my own mind; an urban Huckelberry Finn from the very start and it really hasn’t waned much…it all came from the start.

All the ingredients were there….safety, love, security, love, Dodger games, my grandma’s always open arms, laughter, music, love, time to wonder, time to wander, X-mas, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, a transistor radio, summer road trip vacations, Coca Cola, The Looking Glass’s, “Brandy”, Pop culture, friends, imagination. It was all there…there was no static…the absence of any of the major themes above would have made it hard, or even impossible, to have a fantastic childhood, but to my amazing fortune…there was the lack of none of it. My cup ranneth over.

The recipe: Create a solid axis for a child...and then let them spin around it...at ever increasing speeds and distances from that axis. It will all work out, but the axis must be stable and steady. Add the above ingredients (or ones quite similar). Bon Appetit!

In my case, childhood set me up for, perhaps, the most important tenet of life—certainly the most comforting:

The everlasting, inextinguishable, and always reliable awareness that you are your own best friend. It’s a bliss that I have taken for granted from the beginning. Imagine…never being lonely, always having your closest confidante right beside you…the person who could make you laugh the most and the loudest. The person that was always there to pat you on the back, and make you think, and smile, and ask questions.

One of my favorite memories from my childhood, and one that I replay in my mind still…is one of the most simple and mundane everyday events for a kid…or at least it was when I was one (a now extinct routine, how sad). It is the un-rushed, solitary, and yet often magical walk home that I experienced from my grammar school to the back steps of my home in Glendale California. It seemed like forever but as I look it up now on google maps, I see (for the first time) that the distance was only a meager mile--not even a "country" mile. I would never have believed it. I thought I had to pass through 4 different climate zones, a forest of exotic singing and colorful birds, Mrs. Jameson’s always barking dog, a trail of sweet smelling jasmine, a bridge, and, depending on the season, a long patch of carob pods that had conveniently fallen directly in my line of travel. I could never resist kicking some of them as I walked on my 1 mile journey--the journey home. I would kick the longish, gnarled, hard pods and they would skid forward on the sidewalk, coming to a stop a few feet or yards before me….and then I'd catch up, and kick them again. It was priceless.

I’m not sure what I thought about on those many walks home from school every weekday but I know it was varied and bountiful, and entertaining. It was all mine. I held it close to my heart then, and now. It all came to a convenient end as I crossed my foot onto my driveway. I’ll stop there.

If you have a fantastic childhood, and an imagination…the rest is pure gravy. I'm truly sorry for the many who can't say they had "fantastic" childhoods. It should be an entitlement for a child. I think that much of what is important starts with those simple ingredients and yet so many parents aren't equipped to provide those mostly easily affordable basics. They can't even provide the love and security and safety....it is so very sad. I can only conclude that for many of the children who are denied a healthy childhood, it can become difficult (in many cases) for them to provide "the basics" for their own kids...and the trauma gets passed on.

Having children is not a right. It is a privilege and a responsibility. If you aren't ready for that bliss filled challenge then wait until (or if) you are. Train for it....put your full weight behind it. Commit to making their childhoods “Fantastic”! You will not have a greater role (or reward) in your life--of that I am certain.

“But my life, my love, and my lady...is the sea”.

Food for thought....