Young Writers Society

*We were supposed to write a childhood piece for writer's craft, and here's mine. It's not the best thing I've written, but that's alright. Crits are welcomed and needed!*

For the first three years of my life, I was in love with an idea. One of the only memories I have of my house was the family portrait that hung above the fireplace in the living room. We all looked so happy, my father, mother and I. My mother’s blonde locks were bunched together in flowing waves, my father’s perfectly groomed moustache was beginning to pepper with age, and I, the sweet little child, was holding the family together, my gentle eyes filled with naiveté. We were all smiling. To the uninformed visitor, we were the vision of unearthly perfection, something that could only be possible in a fairy tale. To me we were the vision of unearthly perfection; I wouldn’t realize until many years later how forced and artificial those smiles really were.

That photograph was taken at our last Christmas together. I remember nothing of the first three years of my life, when my parents were still together, except for that Christmas. Hidden underneath the freshly cut pine tree that died with my parents’ marriage stood the largest package that I had ever seen. The night of Christmas Eve, I had insisted that my mother let me sleep underneath the tree so that I could wait for Santa to come, for at the time, I still believed in something. The fallen pine needles were piercing through my Care Bear pajamas, but nothing could suppress my happiness on that day. I knew that after what would seem a very long sleep, whatever was in that enormous package would be mine.

I’ll never forget what the house looked like that Christmas. My father had gone out early in the season to buy the most beautiful tree he could find. It was incredible; the branches were of a green that I had never seen before and reached out further than I was long. When my parents weren’t around, I would run into the tree, getting lost in its immense thickness and piney smell, voyaging to a place where only my imagination could take me. All I needed to do was stand still, right in the thicket of branches, close my eyes, and I would be next to goblins and pirates and fairies in a place I had never been before. We used to play together, and create memories. Perhaps if I had only awoken from these places more often I could have seen the truth, instead of what I wanted my reality to be.

For the last time as a family, we decorated the tree together, and as a finishing touch, my father picked me up so I could put the rose-cheeked angel upon its pedestal. When she was arranged in her spot, I was supposed to make a wish, and my wish that year was to get a new red tricycle. It would have pink and white tassels as long as my ponytail and I would be able to see my reflection in the little chrome wheels. These were the concerns of my childhood. When Christmas morning came, I immediately opened the giant box waiting for me under the tree. I ripped and I ripped, both hands grabbing at the box, creating a cascading rainfall of colourful paper. Ribbons became airborne and got stuck in the tree, and bows flung every which way, making the room look like a massive present itself. As the fury subsided, an enormous smile spread across my face.

“Wred Twicycle!’ I screamed with joy.

My tricycle was destroyed before my mother departed. I left it out on the driveway and my father ran it over on his way to work. I was devastated, and I never really thought I could forgive him. Nothing had ever been so horrible in my life, but then my mother left my father, and that’s how the sequence happens in my memory. Christmas came, my mother left. In reality, there were many months in between those two events, but to me, time was never the same after that moment. I was never the same after that moment. And, my imagination couldn’t make it go away. It was the first time that I realized that the trivial things in life, like my new red tricycle, really didn’t matter in the end; our connections with each other did, and yet I decidedly destroyed all that I had created with anyone. My parents had hurt me, and I wanted to hurt them. I couldn’t find a spot to place my rage; I didn’t understand the logistics of what happened. All I could process was that one day, my mother took me into the car, left home, and never came back, and for that I have never forgiven her. The only thing I could picture was that photograph in the mahogany frame, wondering why the seemingly perfect people in the picture seemed so happy when the real ones were so incredibly sad.

It wasn’t supposed to end that way. If Walt Disney had taught me anything, it was that everyone lived happily ever after. And, at the tender age of three, I couldn’t understand how everything hadn’t worked out. Where was my miracle? Where was my fairy godmother? Why couldn’t my life turn back to the way it was after the clock struck midnight, just as I had watched it happen only short days ago in Cinderella? I couldn’t wrap my little mind around why life couldn’t be perfect like the photograph.

Something irreversible happened that day. Yes, my parents got divorced, and a marriage came to an end, but that is something that is forgettable. As we were pulling away from the only home I had known my entire life, my childhood, along with my father, was left at that house. I was watching myself grow up. Somewhere, flying over top the roofs of the neighbourhood, all I could see was my three year old self clutching at my teddy bear in the back seat of the moving truck, wondering, with silent tears streaming down my face, why my father had run over my little red tricycle. In my mind, there will always be a before and an after that moment, where the middle consists of me floating above my reality, never really awaking from a dream that was more frightening than a nightmare. I suppose I’m stuck in Neverland somewhere, and the ticking crocodile is chasing me. I’m old in soul but not in body, and part of me is still watching my life as a movie.

I wonder if I’ll ever come down.