Fond Childhood Memories

So, it's been a rainy day today in Daejeon and that means that I'm keeping myself entertained in my apartment. I've been listening to a lot of music and one song that I just can't get enough of is Gotye's "Bronte." This song and video just bring back so many memories of when I was a kid. 

"What?!?", you may ask. "Don't be stupid, Marisol. You grew up in the city." Well, yes. You'd be right. But I did hang out at my mom's school a lot when I was a kid and they had a big garden which, to me, might as well have been a giant forest, seeing as it had more trees in it than the average public park near my house. This garden had trees that seemed to be a million years old and towered over everything else on campus. As a kid, I loved going to school with my mom because the classrooms where she studied English and child development were right next to that garden. This meant that I kept myself entertained at the same time that my mom could keep a constant eye on me because the classroom door was always open. 

My sister Nancy and I used to go there and we'd wander around the place. We would pretend that we were in a secret forest and we would spend hours laying on our stomachs or sitting on the rocks, peering over the small pond and staring at the tadpoles. Eventually, another kid joined us. There was a boy there who I think must've been the gardener's grandson. He was mute (or maybe I just never listened to what he said...), but it didn't matter because Nancy, the boy, and I had a lot of fun just running around and pointing at things for the others to come over and stare at. To this day, I have no idea what the boy's name was. All I remember about this boy is that he was white, had silver blond hair, and smiled a lot. Nancy and I had a lot of fun exploring the forest with him. 

Sometimes I remember those days and I long for them. I long for that time of peaceful innocence; that time in which all that mattered were the trees, the pond, and the tadpoles and bugs that lived there. I long for that time, a time of childhood wildness, in which for a few hours a week, I felt like I was part of something bigger; something organic that I had no control over. Nevermind that this wasn't a real forest, but rather a rinky-dink garden that ended at the chain-link fence that separated it from a residential  cul-de-sac, but for at least three kids, it was special.