Childhood

To my elders,

I am obsessed with my own past. Mainly the things I can’t remember. My rational of my teenage attitude, my child’s logic, my toddler precociousness, and my never ending baby cries. I never grew out of the stage of wanting to hear real stories, about myself, about my sisters, and about my family. I love seeing footage of myself as a kid. Because I don’t remember it. Its a trippy experience, a Trumanshow-esque experience, to know that it was you, but doesn’t feel like it was you. I watched myself carefully carry a dinner plate to the table. I watched it with every step, making sure I didn’t spill on my grandmother’s beige carpet. And then a grown-up nearly walked into me. My head was barely at their waist. So I pulled back. I was trying so hard not to spill. So I pulled my chest towards my plate. My mom reached down just in time to stop me from dumping it all down my front. I was about three.

Hearing the stories, knowing my unknown past, albeit from the point of view of someone else, comforts me. Knowing that I was, even as a small child, a night owl. Knowing I was a precocious little kid, even with my late birthday. I learned to swim at age 2. E made me certificates for my first bob and the first time I climbed the latter into the neighbour’s loft. But more than comfort, I think these stories are telling.

I believe that the personality we have before we turn into teenagers, combined with our experiences, makes the people we turn out to be. People don’t change. Not really. Little things change, and we have phases, but the base is always the same. I was prone to giggle fits at the dinner table when I was 6 and I still am today. I picked primary colour, geometric shapes wallpaper for my bedroom when I was 3, rejecting my mother’s pick of pink and pretty and flowery. Nothing has changed. My apartment is decorated with bright colours and strong shapes. From pop art to IKEA prints, maps to movie posters, there is a reflection of that wallpaper in every room I have ever decorated.

I enjoy recounting stories of my sickly, allergy filled childhood, my being the only small child to ever need to get woken up my their parents at 10am on a sunny day, influence and teasing from my dear elders, and my ever present: “Go back to sleep. You’ve been in bed for 2 hours. You must have been asleep.” “I was awake.” “You were asleep. I woke you up.” “Ok mommy.” (I don’t know why I feel my never changed sleeping habits are so fundamental to who I am, but I really do believe it. The few times in my life I’ve been regularly exhausted enough to fall asleep as soon as I went to bed have left me feeling oddly disconnected, not having had that extra hour or two to mull over my day.) Recounting these stories to friends is kind of strange however. Rarely can they recount their own. They have never asked. They have never asked what their favourite food was at age 2 (mine: pickles. Pickles could not even be mentioned in my presence without my demanding I be given one), they don’t remember the outfit that made them feel special at age 6 (mine: pink leggings and an oversized white t-shirt with a large, brightly coloured flower print across the front. The first time that sort of thing was cool), and they don’t know how their parents treated them in public (hi mom! No shoes were allowed if we were throwing a tantrum. Barefoot on concrete hurts more and makes you stop kicking, toy store visits were divided into looking days and buying days so we didn’t whine for whim purchases, and if my mom bought us a treat at the grocery store, it was likely to be a lemon for A and a lime for me as it was to be real candy). And knowing this about my childhood somehow manages to give the impression that I, like everyone else, am not simple. Am not easily categorized and defined. Am not only one thing. But, like everyone else, are a bizarre mash-up of millions of tiny things, pulled together nonlinearly to create the people we are. Full of Silly and Joy and limes and pop art and pink leggings.

-K