Childhood Drift

I’ve lived a long time. Maybe not in the form of more tangible human years, but mentally… mentally, I’ve lived a long time. A lot longer than I ever thought I would.

I was born on the eastern coast of Canada, in a place too big to call a town, and too small to consider a city, at least by my own considerations. In reality, we were classified as a city, though most of us wouldn’t know the real definition of that word for years to come.

I have a recurring dream of my childhood far older than any child would normally remember his or her history. I’m nothing but a baby, a toddler perhaps at most… sitting or standing in a crib. It’s a somewhat-barren looking room with my enclosure pushed up against the right and rear walls, opposite the door. There is a window on the left-hand wall (whether this is north, south, east or west is beyond my comprehension, so I only understand direction by the orientation from which I’m facing), it takes up the majority of that surface. The room isn’t large at all and is sparse, somewhat barren. I recall standing in that crib, watching the door and the window, and in later years upon vocal recollection I’ve been told this is in fact the room in the ‘house’ where I was born (a trailer more than a house). We lived in a smaller town outside the main city, where I was born and briefly raised before moving into the city proper.

I have other strange dreams as well, ones that haunted me into my tweens and teens. One dream included a scenario where I was lying in bed in our one-story home before moving the the larger two-story abode where I’d spend most of my life. In this bed, I’m physically trapped; restrained by what I can only describe as a wall extending down from the ceiling and cutting through the lower part of my body. I don’t necessarily feel any pain, but I also cannot move. I’m immobilized. The wall is somewhat ornate, perhaps resembling the decorative touches on an older wooden banister.

Where I would have gotten such an imagine, I’m not entirely sure, but it existed to hold me down without relenting in a recurring nightmare. I could never explain that one I’m afraid, nor could anyone else.

I’ve never been sure which ‘class’ of society we fit into growing up. My dad worked a trade and my mother worked a job for money under-the-table to make ends meet. I always figured we were identical to any other family, those of my friends and family, though it would be in later years where I first realized we were in a much different situation than many. I never knew how tight our budget was when I was a child, and I suppose that’s a major credit to my mother’s ability to make do with what we had. Your children should never know you’re in monetary distress, it’s just not their responsibility, a stressor they don’t need to know about.

Some might argue and say it’s a lesson in learning to appreciate money, but I think when you bring children into this world, you need to provide for them a childhood as void from stress as possible. Monetarily speaking, I certainly knew of nothing unusual, though there would be other deep, dark segments of my life that brought stress in other ways.

I was raised with manners, that I should be seen and not heard, speak only when spoken to, respect your elders (even if they are terribly, terribly wrong) and know my place in life. I knew that everything I had in life was a privilege and could be taken away at any given time, though that being said I certainly had a lot to my name, probably more than others my age.

After moving from the trailer to the single-story home and finally into a century-old two-story farmhouse, I was lucky enough to have quite a large room of my own — one that I would never share with any others.

I was an only child, though I found out later in life my mother had actually been pregnant previously but suffered a miscarriage.

Somedays I ponder about that event, in terms of whether or not I would even exist had that pregnancy gone to full term, and whether or not the alternate outcome would have been for the best.