I’ve been thinking a lot about my childhood lately. Jeremiah and I were at my house just this weekend looking through baby books and laughing at little MsP photographs. I would look at my sister (who is 6 years older than me) and her 7 year old photos and I would look at my 7 year old photos. My sister had this innocence, this wonder in her eyes. She knew nothing outside of our world of mom and dad and the farm and our very close family. She was intelligent, but I think she loved believing that it was only us sometimes. On the other hand, I see little me. I was strangely wise at 7 years old. I was also full of wonder, but it wasn’t about princesses, magic wands, and prince charming. My wonder was in books and science and fact. I started reading shockingly early- much thanks to my father who thought it important to read to me nightly. My first novel was Around the World in 80 Days and I read it completely at the age of 4. I loved adventure books like Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland, but I grew tired of those all of the time. I started checking out classic novels from the library and also digging through my family’s collections. All Creatures Great and Small came next, followed by my still favorite book Alas, Babylon. I found these captivating novels, even at only 6 years old. Medical and murder mysteries were next, along with continuing the classics. When I entered Kindergarten, most of my class was learning the alphabet and I was struggling through a book I had found in my dad’s cabinet: Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams. I don’t think he meant to let me get a hold of that one at such a young age, but I worked through it the best I could.
It should be no surprise to you by now that this reading had made me quite a surprising conversationalist and a very rational being for 6 years old. One day on the playground I was talking to my friends and one said in a hushed tone that she “knew where babies came from.” She continued to tell us all that they came from a cabbage patch and grew in the ground. I sat quietly and listened, hearing her points and trying my best to rationalize this concept. I had never thought about that. Where did babies come from? So, instead of out right asking my parents I poked around and thought really hard about the facts. It took male and female to create life and it was a private act that parents didn’t like to discuss when asked. I thought back to how my dog had had puppies earlier in the year and how I’d seen our male dog “in the process” with her. I had also seen bulls do the same with cows. It clicked for me in a sense that day. I knew enough about anatomy at this point, having been raised around all boys. It was never by choice- country boys need the slightest excuse to strip down and run naked… it’s a fact of life. I went to the encyclopedia and searched for “birth” where I read about sperm fertilizing eggs and implanting in the uterus during “sex.” Ah hah! That’s the word I was looking for. So at 6 years old, I walked to the playground a week later armed with my information. We sat in our little girl circle making headbands out of flowers and I told them all about sex. It was there that my role as the class informant was born but it is where I also crushed a few spirits. One girl, pouting, said her parents would never lie to her. I told her that there was no way that babies grew from the ground- we didn’t come from plants after all. I told her to think of all the big bellied ladies who later had babies. She still wasn’t convinced and I tried to further my point by telling her that believing in the cabbage patch was like believing in Santa or the Tooth Fairy.
The group stopped making headbands and looked at me shocked, except another friend of mine. She shrugged and looked around. I told them that their parents were Santa and the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny- I told them that this was why Santa’s handwriting was just like their mom’s. Suddenly, the group erupted in tears and a teacher came over to investigate. They told her that I had lied about Santa being our parents and she gingerly pulled me into her classroom asking for an explanation. I explained the best I could, worried that I would get paddled. she smiled and called my mom, asking her to stop by the classroom once school was over. I’m sure my mom was baffled- I was such a good kid. This teacher then did something that changed my life forever. She sat in with me and asked me questions, testing the limits of my knowledge. She knew that coming in to this class I could read but no one had assessed my capability for conversation or rational thought. We spent the recess talking about our favorite books and I showed her how I figured out multiplication by watching my sister do her homework. We talked about babies and why it was ok for parents to lie to their kids about certain things. She pulled books off of the shelves and asked me to read from them- looking to see if I could comprehend the things I was reading to her. I looked up at her- she was looking at me in a puzzled manner. I asked if I had done anything wrong, if I was in trouble, if maybe there was something wrong with me. She told me something like this: “No. You are doing nothing wrong. You know the older we get the more we learn and it takes us a long time to realize the importance of learning. When we’re young we want to play and not grow up. But you, Natalie, you have a gift. You love to learn. If you never lose that, you’re going to be the most successful person we’ve ever seen.”
My mom and this teacher didn’t discuss what I had told the other kids today. What they did discuss was my education and how to approach it. I was given extra work to keep me occupied, because much like I still am today I was very hyperactive one I got bored. When I was 7 they let me take a test to gauge my reading and comprehension level. I scored in the college level for both. I continued reading, and this teacher taught me about my next true love: writing. Where I was practical and rational in conversation, on paper I spun the most wonderful stories, my mom told me later. I would come home at night, finish my homework and barn work and sit down to write. My mom would force me to put down my pencil and many a night she would catch me awake in my bathroom, scribbling away and lost in my fantasy world I was creating.
This 7th year was the year that I revealed to my parents my rational brain. At Christmas, I looked at mom and told her why Santa couldn’t be real. She taught me an important lesson that day in a roundabout manner. She told me that as long as I believed, I could still get presents. But to me, that was her permission to be a kid. I knew the truth, but I was allowed to pretend. These early lessons have shaped my career in a very odd way. I am rational and book-y. I read and research everything I can, but I can still look at a brand new baby that I’ve just delivered and not think about body processes and what it took for this little one to get here. I can look at them and imagine the next president, the person to cure cancer, the next musical prodigy, the next revolution in EMS. I still make wishes, I still expect kisses when I bump my head to cure the headache, I put cookies out on Christmas Eve and thank Santa every Christmas morning for the gifts. I am an adult and have been from a very young age…but that doesn’t mean I can’t be a kid at heart. I always will be… and that’s what I love about me.
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very interesting in deed la fée des dents doesn’t exist wow i was sure she was … but not to worry i m 37 years hold and every x-max i find my self looking for the best looking santa and i go sit on is laps to ask him that at least that day peace and love should be there and for my love one to be safe and sound , i steel believe we can make it better
Thanks for sharing
~Brad
@EMTGoose
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why does this all sound so familiar?