Shadows of Childhood
I am reaching my eightieth birthday soon and after listening to various songs about childhood memories and reading the poem of Thomas Hood I could not resist the temptation to dig into my childhood activities that gave me so much knowledge to develop my life.
One of the best things about being a parent is being able to see life from my childhood perspective again. I have many memories from growing up on rural farm of my grandparents and parents in a small village of Fiji called Botini. I am really amazed at many of my old childhood memories. Of course I remember climbing the mango and coconut and roaming round the farm with my elders and my aunts and uncles. It reawakens that little and chubby farm boy in me. Ait is so amazing that all of a sudden, I can remember those days with such detail.
After we had four children of our own we were proud to take them to the old farm to show them around. Our children were growing up in urban environment and to witness life on the farm was exciting to them. They saw my mother milking her cows, and my father holding out a handful of green para grass to the beautiful cow that kept chewing the grass so merrily.
The Place I Grew Up in Botini
To watch my parents do the things that I once did was amazing not only to me but more so to my four children. I loved the look of pride on their little faces when they conquered their fear of animals and kept their little hand out long enough for a cow to actually take the green grass and then try milking the cow themselves.
Then there were the chicken, ducks, goats, horses, dogs and the kittens that made my children forget their urban living for a while.. My eldest child in his excitement began chasing the chicks and in doing so he stepped on one of the tiny ones and crushed it to death. I could see the anger on my mother’s face but the love of grandchildren brought total forgiveness for this crime.
There were always so many new activities for my children and all of it was such a fun and game for them. My own children then began believing all my childhood experiences that I used to tell them. We kept going to the village to keep the memories of childhood alive and make our children see the rural side of life and living we had come from.
While the children and I were visiting my family farm over the holidays, my children kept making their own great discoveries: I remember at night we used to go out and huddled in a bunch and craned our necks up. There was nothing like seeing a sky full of stars on the country farm of my parents. After these stints and visits the poem of Thomas Hood made a lot more sense to my children.
