Childhood Treasures

A collection of my past or suggestions of childhood rest on this old suitcase.

My childhood swimming

In Memory’s vast ocean

Unclear in the depths

 

CHAPTER 1.1 : TREASURES FROM CHILDHOOD

La duchesse d’Erat has introduced a weekly challenge and has suggested a list of your Childhood Treasures; A toy, a smell, a Proustian madeleine,something from the school playground, or maybe a crazy laugh.

I found thinking back on my childhood to identify treasures very difficult. I was very blessed to have a magical childhood so to extricate 6 treasures from it is difficult. To objectify a time is difficult in itself but when childhood to me remains more of feelings and emotions than events or items it becomes even harder.

I collected a few items around the house which do remind me of some treasured memories and share them below.

List of my Childhood Treasures

1/ My first teddy bear squeezed so much that it will never recover. Saturated with the tears of childhood and whispered secrets, “Little Ted” knows all.

2/ My great grandmother’s majong set. An eternal source of “romance” to me; a treasure box of exotic and mysterious lands. We always had games in the house and loved playing cards or scrabble. Monopoly however…

3/ An old wind up train. I hardly knew one of my grandfathers as he lived beyond our reach but I still recall the memory of a four year old – a sun filled room in a house by a lake where I met him for the first time, kneeling on the floor by the wind up railway he had put together just for me.

4/ Music. As I couldn’t fit a piano in the shot the balalaika had to do. We had a young life filled with music and I loved watching my mother playing at the piano in my grandparents beautiful old house although I cannot remember the tune.

5/ Old books. My grandfather was an author of children’s books and always had a huge library where we could take the books and read. I grew to love the feel and smell of old books and the joy and endless mystery of how black symbols on a page caused your mind to create a kaleidoscope of images.

6/ My amazing father. He worked so hard. Every day he would get up at 4 and come home with a distinct smell of grease and metal. I loved to watch him working around the house, making it a home and then helping us build magical sandcastles on the beach as other children spontaneously joined us, entranced by his quiet goodness.

My Grandmother is in a league all of her own and too great a creator of treasured memories to add to this list. She is an encyclopedia in itself.

 

The Great Book of Lists, chapter 1.1 : Treasures from Childhood
https://ronovanwrites.wordpress.com/2016/01/04/ronovanwrites-weekly-haiku-poetry-prompt-challenge-78-vastclear/