Years of Bliss

I started thinking this morning, about my six years of bliss – birth to six years old.  Ah, how wonderful those days were. I may have had a scheduled bedtime, but to help me relax, I always had someone to read me a story. Oh the places we’d go in those stories!

I had no set time to get up in the morning; and, other dressing and hygiene, as long as I didn’t get into or make any trouble, I was fairly free to do just about anything my heart desired. That was within the boundaries of my home in my younger years, expanding accordingly to neighbors’ homes as I grew older.

As long as I treated others, and my mother, with respect things got along very well. I mean, if Mom was happy, Dad was happy. We liked to keep Dad happy because he worked such long days and still had man’s work to do when he got home at night. Come on you equal-righters, cool your tools. I was a child of the 50s. That’s the way things were done.

I had it better than some kids, since my elementary school had no Kindergarten. I had the extra year of bliss. Not that getting up at a set time and pleasing another adult was that awful. At least for half a day.

Now a whole day was another story. That was when my troubles began. First grade. Not as much the getting up as trying to keep another woman happy. I had Mrs. Heck for a teacher in first grade and she was actually not too hard to please, compared to Mrs. Discher and Mrs. Weiser in second and third grades. Fourth was the most traumatic, with Mrs. Kuhns. It was the first time I got slapped and it was for calling the teacher’s pet what she was – a teacher’s pet. I’m not sure which was worse, the slap or the recess I missed. I think the stinging of my cheek wore off faster than recess was.

I spent far too much time day-dreaming. At least that was what most my teachers reported on parent’s night. That and the fact I wasn’t doing as well as I should have. I didn’t know how in the world they knew how well I should have been doing. After all, I was still learning. And, it wasn’t like they spent a lot of time getting to know me. How could they with 25 to 30 other students demanding their attention, while I on the other hand, preferred living in my own private world.

I won’t even get into junior and senior high school, except to say it was a night mare. Sometimes in my worst nightmares even today I’m back there, still trying to remember the combination to my locker or figure out what was my next class since I lost my class schedule.

I would say that if someone offered me a million dollars to go back to those high school days I would think about it. If they said I had to go for all six years, there would be nothing to think about.  The only million would be the number of years that would have to pass before I’d even consider it.

I cried the first day each of my sons started school. A lot of mothers did. We all said it was because we’d miss them, but if truth be known I suspect they, like I, were feeling horrible about the end of our child’s bliss.  In reality, that bliss had been lost a few short years earlier when they’d started pre-school.

Pre-school, another sign of the times. It was the 70s when mothers left their homes and sought careers. For some – like me -- it was necessity. For others it was a time when we realized men were not the only ones who could “be all they can be.”

It was a strain pretending I didn’t sympathize with my sons every time they came home with a problem in school. I couldn’t let on that those same years had been the worst times of my life.  Too this day, I must remain silent as my young, innocent grandchildren go off to school.  I must sound excited for them when I ask how school has been.  Though, strange as it seems, they actually do sound as though they enjoy it.

Maybe now I know why. I ran into one of my teachers a few years ago at a writer’s group meeting. To my chagrin he remembered me. Whatever I said that instigated his next comment, I will ever be grateful for what he said. He told me that when I was in school, teachers were not prepared for students like me.  Before I could take that to mean anything derogatory, he continued explaining that they were not taught different ways to teach different students. Again, one had to listen to the entire context to understand he was dishing out a compliment.

Yes, he was telling me that because I had such a creative mind, I couldn’t be taught with the old standards. He was actually pleased I’d turned out so well.

Okay, I added that part, because he did seem pleased to see I’d fared well.

So, I’m actually still in my bliss. I’m doing what I always wanted to do. Allowing my mind to drift from possibility to possibility as I try to answer the question, “What if?” Yes, I’m a writer.

You can find my latest novel here.