Looking back

Now I have grandchildren I sometimes wonder how much they will remember the times we have together. Nothing special. Just the everyday things. Reading a story. Playing hide and seek. Cuddles. Bath time. Bed time.

It would be wonderful if we could all remember the first few years of our lives. After all, these are the years – we are told – that form us, shape us into the people we become.

I was trying to encapsulate those feelings when I wrote the poem, “Childhood”. It was written many many years ago when I was a new mum. I have blogged it before but wanted to share it again.

Although it was a very long time ago, I can still remember how I felt. I expressed the same feelings in another poem of mine you might have read – the one that goes …

” I watch my child asleep in bed

what dreams can he be dreaming

the little sleepyhead

I want to build a wall around his cot

Shield him from the world

Instead I tuck his blankets tight

And kiss my sleeping child goodnight.”

I am sure this is how many parents must feel about their sleeping children.

The same feeling still comes over me when I hold one of our four fabulous grandsons.

The years are swept away and I remember this poem I wrote when I was a new mother.

Do let me know if it strikes a chord with you.

Childhood

Is this how it was?

Curtains drawn

Fire glowing

Warm inside

Outside snowing

Little child snug on mother’s knee

Cheeks flushed

rosy

warm, content

Is this how my childhood went?

Now I sit

with my own son

whose life has only just begun

He cuddles close

and hugs me tight

And everything in the world

seems right

I now yearn for the child I was

The years are swiftly going

I watch my child

and other children

Living, loving, growing.

If only we now grown up

could recall how it was then

when all the world was mother’s smile

and begin again.

© Andrea Neidle, My Life in Poems

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