Completing A Childhood Story

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

There was such a story in my childhood …

It was with my grandmother in the village

Every summer my parents sent me to my grandmother.

My grandmother lived on the Volga between Kazan and Nizhny Novgorod, then still Gorky.

I was 13 years old that summer. And we had a company. My friend and I, who also came to visit her grandmother and local boys. And we spent all the time together.

They swam and sunbathed on the beach. They played different games. "Bouncers", "Potatoes", "The quieter you go - the further you will be", etc.

And one day this company and I gathered to meet the dawn.

And I must say that meeting the dawn on the Volga was very beautiful and romantic.

The Volga in that place was wide, the shore was sandy. In general, just a fairy tale!

We got together. I don’t remember what I told my grandmother that I would come back later, or that I didn’t say anything only in the morning … But I don’t remember …

And so, we got together, joking, laughing, we have so much fun that we are free, we are almost adults.

We came to the bank of the Volga, lit a fire …

R-o-m-a-n-t-i-k-a-a-a-a-a …

We sat, talked, mostly joked and laughed.

It was great! I felt some kind of joy, enthusiasm and inspiration! It seemed to me that the fact that we are meeting the dawn is so wonderful and wonderful!

I was just happy …

And then everyone began to go home …

Me and one boy who liked me, and he, too, we stayed on a bench next to my house.

And he awkwardly, boyishly embarrassed, kissed me on the cheek …

And I was so innocent and for me a kiss on the cheek was something extremely unusual and even somehow shameful … And I, confused and embarrassed, said to him: "Well, why did you do that?"

He became even more embarrassed and began to ask me for forgiveness. I got down on my knees and began to ask for forgiveness … I was confused by all this and did not know how to behave …

Then after some time we said goodbye to him and I went home.

I slept in the hayloft that summer.

And I went through the gate into the courtyard of my grandmother's house and began to climb up the ladder to the hayloft.

And then my grandmother came out. And she began to swear at me that I was hanging around somewhere and that I was … a prostitute … She shouted at me: "Prostitute, you are hanging around with the men!"

Hearing this, I burst into tears … And I told her that I did not hang out with anyone, that my friends and I met the dawn. But she did not hear me and insisted that I was a prostitute …

Sobbing, I climbed into the hayloft and continued to cry from resentment that my grandmother called me such an insulting word. That she thinks so badly of me … I cried for a long time and there was no one to comfort me … I was unpleasant that my grandmother thought so badly about me … I was angry that she did not hear me … I was very hurt and lonely that I was with no one I cannot share my feelings and experiences … I felt somehow soiled by my grandmother's words … I felt very bad …

The next day I had to go home …

I never saw this boy again …

And then I was so offended by my grandmother …

Years have passed. And only years later, when I had already learned to be a psychologist, I realized that my grandmother was screaming at me out of her fear for me, out of her anxiety that something would happen to me, and she was to answer to my parents. Out of her anger that I hadn’t come earlier, and she was very worried about where I was and what was wrong with me …

Before that boy, I later felt regret that I told him like that and that he felt guilty. Although, of course, he was not guilty of anything. We were innocent children …

Such was the story in my teenage childhood …

It turned out to be interwoven with so many conflicting feelings for me … And joy and delight from meeting the dawn. And a feeling of sympathy or even falling in love. And confusion and embarrassment from the first kiss. And the bitterness from the words of the grandmother …

Remembering this situation now, I feel that sympathy for myself. A lot of sympathy.

I would like to tell myself that: “Larisa, dear, the fact that you came home late does not mean that you are a prostitute. You are nice! And I'm very sorry that grandma spoke to you like that. Do not believe her, everything is fine with you, everything is fine."

And I would like to say to my grandmother: “Grandma, I am angry that you called me such a dirty and insulting word just because I came late. I'm sad that you called me that and said that about me. I'm sorry that you could not find other words to say that you were worried about me. And forgive me that I unwittingly made you worry. I didn't think about it then. I didn't think at all. And I didn't want you to worry about me."

To that boy, I would like to say: “I'm sorry that I told you so. I myself was confused by your innocent kiss. Forgive me for unwittingly hitting you with something."

With these words, I complete that situation for myself.

How often it happens that in childhood a child is left alone with his strong feelings and thoughts about himself, relationships with other close people. He has no one to share his experiences with.

And how important it is for a child that someone adult tells him that everything is fine with him, that he is good. So that someone adult could share with him those experiences with which the child is so difficult and incomprehensible and difficult to cope with.