Childhood

I have been lying in the fields near my house for hours, listening to the flowers as they sing to me. The percussive rattling of leaves being shifted by the wind is interwoven throughout their song, rising and falling on my chest as I draw in the musical air. It glides down my throat and takes over me. I'm in bed with nature, and it's a considerate lover, whispering sweet nothings in my ear: the rhythmic scuttling of spiders and subdued swishing of parachutist petals gliding smoothly around and to the ground.

Occasionally, I readjust my arm or reposition my leg, but for the most part, I lie still, contented with being alone and listening to the song. Even if it rains, I won't move. Precipitation is just another instrument, playing along to the endless music. I keep my eyes closed: All that I want to do is listen. I've rediscovered the childhood harmony that I had lost.

When I was a toddler, everything was made of glass. Transparent, it reflected and refracted light in fragile ways that I didn't notice. My parents could always force a reassuring smile. I sat on glass roundabouts and stared in wonder at the concrete spinning beneath me, my pupils flicking from left to right, focussing on everything at once but never able to pinpoint any detail. I could stand up and run without any wind to run against me, and could feel curiosity without also feeling trepidation. At the sighting of a ladybird, a butterfly, an ambulance, any bruises became forgotten. Sirens only held good memories.

Then I started to grow up. It was unnoticeable at first; my black hair became slightly blacker, my eyes slightly surer. I flinched less at the racecar buzzing of a bee as it flew past my ear, dead-set on where it was going until it changed its mind.  Eventually, my parents decided that I was old enough to learn about fine dining: "elbows off the table, Jane"; "don't talk with your mouth full, Jane". I obeyed them without question. Mum and Dad, the people who were always right. But when I had graduated from nursery, primary school greeted me with a few domestic truths: Actually, 'God' and 'Dad' aren't synonymous. Just nearly.  

In fact, primary school is where life started going wrong. Although I still enjoyed the insignificant details of life, I was also learning about them. I began to understand the science behind the refractions, and noticed the reflections; soon, I could predict where they would be.

Outside of school, my parents began to treat me differently. They told me off where they'd previously given me a mischievous smile, and took me on fewer trips to the zoo, or the beach. They humoured me less when I showed them my latest crumbling attempt at a sandcastle. Of course, there were benefits to growing up too. Alongside a later bedtime, I was allowed to watch the programs that I'd previously listened to stealthily from the top of the stairs. I began to learn the piano. I was even allowed to have friends to stay for sleepovers; sometimes we'd stay up until midnight. Despite feeling older, I was still young really.

On my first day at Bisgrove High School for Girls, I was lurched ferociously into a life of teenage pressure by the firm grasp of my new headmistress, Ms Vera Spoolage. Glaring at me from behind her contemptuous English Setter squint, she demanded to know why my grammar school tie was "dangling squiffily to the side". I realised that I wasn't allowed to be a child any more.

Life became harder. The first three years of secondary school were a slow but steady turned-off tap of information, dripping adulthood into my involuntarily open mouth. In Year 10, the tap got turned on, and a coppery flood of simplified enlightenments knocked me flat. Four years later, I finished school as a different person. I was grade seven at piano, and in an amateur band called 'Love's Liars'. I went out until five o'clock in the morning, and fell home more diagonally than my tie all of those years ago. I was ambitious too, and looking forward to studying for a degree in physics. I hoped to become a medical physicist, helping people to conquer cancer. I had begun to discover the realities of life, but I was still naïve.

I never realised my aspirations. My degree work was never good enough, and although I still went out and had fun with my newest round of friends, I was drinking for the wrong reasons. Struggling with my newfound independence, I dropped out of university and moved back into my parents' house, doing whatever I could to make their life at home more comfortable. I negotiated work experience as a carer in a retirement home nearby, and they chose to keep me on as an employee. Since then, I've been helping people in whatever way I can.

And now, in the fields, I feel completely at peace again. The soft lullaby of the flowers hugs me closely, making me feel secure. Eyes closed, I smile to myself, imagining myself sitting on a roundabout made of glass, staring at the world as it spins beneath me. Nature warms me discretely as I fall asleep, the child inside me content once more.