A child for one day

When I came back from our long beach walk with puppy Josie earlier today heavy grey clouds were hanging over the sky and covered the bright blue. If that is not the perfect weather for a long lazy afternoon with a cup of tea and a book!

And that's how I met Alice. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is the current title I am reading (along with Gone with the wind of course).

What I actually wanted to write about today to finally get me out of my writing block was childhood. Well, yes, Alice's Adventures is considered to be told as a story for children, but apparently one small little poem by Carroll brought me into it, and it goes like this:

I'd give all wealth that years have piled,

The slow result of life's decay, 

To be once more a little child

For one bright summer-day.

It reminded me of my own childhood days in bright summer, and that - whatever the years bring - is some sort of decay. As tension and sorrows, stress and pressure to prestate has been replacing most of the lightness, happiness and creativity of childhood days.


What were the most splendid things to do as a child on a bright summer day? I was always drawn to forests and other places in the nature were my fantasy was able to run as its wildest: Playing Indians & cowboys, pirates, adventurer, camper. Yes, we camped. After the brightest summer day EVER. On a huge meadow. The funny thing was that there usually never were any cattle on it, but that very day it was and when we were telling spooky stories and waving about with our flashlights (of course every proper adventurer needs a flashlight to check for snakes and spiders- no matter that there are not even dangerous snakes or spiders over here) we were in such shock of one big dark shadow showing at the tent - wall. All our brave camper-adventurer philosophy went away at once and we did what we would have never admitted by that time, but we screamed until our voice was hoarse. That is also why we heard the confused "meooouuuuwwwws" only very late. It was only one very curious cow standing in front of the tent and wondering what that blinking thing was on their field....

I was never the "climbing on trees" type and for that also not very much attracted by tree houses, but building small huts in the field of mown grass is a different story. Not that the roof was ever stable enough to serve as a proper one, the building process was always  very funny. It mostly turned out that we were placing hands full of hay into each others clothes which caused a huge and annoying itch. 

Or we handcrafted bows and arrows ourselves, made daisy-chains, playing melodies on blades of grass (very nasty sound), practiced whistling with two fingers, oh, and one time we thought of a (we thought) nice game -- the swapping game. The swapping game was - of course - to generate money in the end. That particular economic goal in mind we collected all kind of items which were available at our homes, such as small vases, deco items, parfum or -- very inventional -- an egg. With those thing in our small pushcart we bombarded the local neighborhood and asked every unlucky person who was to open the door what he would give in exchange. Mostly big question marks occurred on peoples faces, that's why we started to proudly introduce our fantastic (haha) idea. And -- tadaaa, it was indeed a success. Sometimes we were allowed to swap against an ice cream, sometimes we received a small stuffed animal. And sometimes, very sometimes we received a coin for our item. Wohoo, what a success.

The most beautiful thing of being a child is that life was basically fun, love and entertainment and nothing could destroy this near-paradise state of mind. I wish I could be once more a little child for one bright summer day...

What's your most fantastic bright summer-day childhood memory?