childhood

Kids never jumped head first from the top ledge. Never. It seemed forever beforeStoney came back to the surface. Most of the white bubbles had already disappeared.

Once-upon-a-time we buried the memories we didn't want.

_, Wanderess, WanderessWhen did you feel your most euphoric kiss? Was I the source of your greatest bliss?

We grew up learning to cheer on the underdog because we see ourselves in them.

Children have no business expressing opinions on anything except "Do you have enough room in the toes?

I enjoy load shedding in Nepal, when it allows me to witness the dancing of fireflies in the next field, and at the same time to hear children playing a chanting clapping game because there is no TV to waste their time on.

For a child, it is in the simplicity of play that the complexity of life is sorted like puzzle pieces joined together to make sense of the world.

They had laid the tender, down-ruffled little bird on a platter and appeared now to be pondering a way to eat out its heart without causing it distress.

Being a 'good' parent is more about the parent, and, less about the 'supposedly-could-have-been-bad' child.

And children are still the way you were ...as a child, sad and happy in just the same way and if you think of your childhood, you once again live among them, among the solitary children, and the grownups are nothing, and their dignity has no value.

When my friends began to have babies and I came to comprehend the heroic labor it takes to keep one alive, the constant exhausting tending of a being who can do nothing and demands everything, I realized that my mother had done all of these things for me before I remembered. I was fed; I was washed; I was clothed; I was taught to speak and given a thousand other things, over and over again, hourly, daily, for years. She gave me everything before she gave me nothing.

Mum bought me _ite for my sixth birthday. It was beautiful. Snowy white with long tail of ribbons. Sheheld the string, and I ran and ran as fast as I _ould, but it kept dropping to clumsy heap on the ground. When I gottired Mum took over, holding it high above her head and running and running until, all at once, _udden wonderful gust of wind took the kite soaring high, high into the sky, so I had to squint to see it.__old on, Rosie!_ Mum had called. __old tight!_ And _ did, gripping the string with all my might as the kite danced high up above, gleaming bright whiteagainst the blue sky, its ribbons sparkling in the sunlight as it flew, soaring and dipping like _ird, forever pulling at the string in my hand __igher, higher _ tugging to getfree. Then I let go.The string snapped from my grip and was gone. Mum raced after it,but it was too fast,soaring up,up and away, higher than the trees. She scooped me up in _ug and told me it was all right, she'd buy me another one. But I didn't want another one. That was my kite,andit was free. I__ let it go.It__ wanted so much to be free that I just couldn't hold on, couldn__ hold it down. I smiled as I watched it whirl away _ above the trees, above the birds, above the clouds, sparkling into the heavens, dancing free. It was the most beautiful thing I _ave ever seen.

Nobody looks like what they really are on the inside. You don__. I don__. People are much more complicated than that. It__ true of everybody.'I said, 'Are you a monster? Like Ursula Monkton?'Lettie threw a pebble into the pond. 'I don't think so,' she said. 'Monsters come in all shapes and sizes, Some of them are things people are scared of. Some of them are things that look like things people used to be scared of a long time ago. Sometimes monsters are things people should be scared of, but they aren't.'I said, 'People should be scared of Ursula Monkton.''P'raps. What do you think Ursula Monkton is scared of?''Dunno. Why do you think she's scared of anything? She's a grown-up, isn't she? Grown-ups and monsters aren't scared of things.'Oh, monsters are scared," said Lettie. "That's why they're monsters. And as for grown-ups...' She stopped talking, rubbed her freckled nose with a finger. Then, 'I'm going to tell you something important. Grown-ups don't look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they're big and thoughtless and they always know what they're doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. Truth is, there aren't any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.

Say what you will, dear sister, we do what we do for the promise of our youth. Yet it is always they who scar beneath the points of daggers.

Increasingly, the girl child is becoming an endangered specie aspedophiles_ continue to roam free in our societies terrorizingthe lives of our children and stripping them of all the joy andexcitement that comes with childhood.

Imagine, pretend, and play so you can become anyone you want to be. You don't need to be afraid.

The poet believed that 'Beauty' first entered the world not at its creation, nor with the first garden, the first sunrise, the birth of the first man and woman and their first sexual act. The poet believed that 'Beauty' entered the world the day the first child blushed.

I think the closest thing to a time machine that I've ever found is the Children's section of a library.