When I look back at my childhood (which I promise you wasn't tragic or anything, so lest you think this is going to be a pity party where I tell you about my shitty childhood messed me up it's not; keep reading), I realize that I was given a lot more freedom than most kids of my generation who were, for lack of a better phrase, helicopter-parented (and still are). Part of this was just luck of circumstances, I suppose. My family lived on a dairy farm located on a dirt road in a sleepy rural town. My grandparents lived across the street from us and cars tended to drive by slowly thanks to the road's poor condition, meaning my parents felt pretty comfortable letting my sister and I roam around and do whatever we wanted without worrying we were going to get into any serious trouble or pulled into white vans by predators. Part of it was also due to the fact that my parents, who were European by birth and natural predilections, didn't really think we needed constant supervision or vigilant scheduling to turn out okay. Thus when most kids my age were being shuttled from one activity to the next (soccer-violin-girl scouts-karate-swim lessons-soccer-tennis lessons-piano-gymnastics-soccer-pottery-jazz dance-etc) in the hours between school, I did pretty much anything that occurred to me out of the immediate supervision of adults. Such a childhood has lead more than one person to tell me I was a "free range" child, allotted a little more cage space than my unlucky conventional peers. We'll see if it yields fresher eggs.
Most of the time the free range-ness never resulted in any problems or immediate peril. Most of the time it just involved me wandering around the woods and fields near our house, alone or with my sister and the odd neighborhood kids (the "neighborhood" loosely consisting of houses within a mile or two of ours, which were few), inventing games of make-believe or charting odd discoveries (a place we called "the secret river pond" that I'm pretty sure now was an illegal septic field of another neighbor, several glass jugs of homemade wine or cider we found buried in the ground, a cow skull). I seemed to have an internal barometer that would let me know if something was unwise (climbing to the top of the grain silo) and when it was time to head home for dinner. Most of the time it worked. A few times it yielded a cold chicken cutlet and a frosty stare from my mother when I stumbled home after dinner, when she was already deep in phone conversation with one of her girlfriends and a cigarette (why are mothers always on the phone and smoking, and now that fewer people smoke and more people text, will a new generation recall their mothers' faced illumined by a touch screen). The only incident of danger I can even recall involved a Saturday afternoon exploring the hay-loft with the boy who lived next door (more over the river and through the woods than next door, but it was still walking distance to our house).
First: a primer on barns. There were several on our property, including our house, which had at one time been used to store machinery and was in various stages of renovation at any given time. By the time this playdate rolled around, though, there was only one left. The bottom level was where the cows lived in comfortable spacious stalls (they were a bit free range too, I suppose) and the top level was where we stored the hay that supplemented their diet in the winter, then they couldn't graze. This hay loft had some handy chutes for dropping hay directly into the bottom level, thus eliminating strenuous and time-consuming work on the farmer's part. The chutes are important.
It was early spring, cool and damp but not unpleasant when we decided to explore this space. Usually it was full of hay and not that interesting, but given the season it was mostly empty, a few bales left and lots of hay detritus obscuring the floor. I don't know what we were hoping to find up there. But there were pigeons roosting in the rafters that must've occupied our time for awhile (and by "occupy" I mean we chucked rocks at them). There were few windows in the space, and the ones that it had were up high, letting peculiar light in and giving a nighttime ambience to our exploration, which must've also felt novel since it was still day outside. What the darkness also did was obscure the floor, along with the hay, meaning I didn't notice when I stepped on the opening to one of the chutes. Somehow, I prevented my whole body from falling through, and held myself up by my arms, leaving my upper body in the loft and my legs flailing in the space between the loft and the barn below. My playmate shot a panic-stricken look in my direction before sensibly realizing he should get our dads, who were "shooting the shit" somewhere in the immediate vicinity.
I don't remember how long he was gone. It felt like a long time. And whether that was because I was in some real danger this time or because he was gone for awhile I have no idea. Our fathers could've been anywhere, given the size of the vicinity and their own tendencies to wander like their offspring. It also might've felt like a long time because children perceive time differently than adults do. Spans of time that feel relatively short to grown-ups (say, the span of school vacation) feel long to children, because children have experienced so little time themselves. So I held myself up by my triceps, wondering whether my playmate had grown distracted in his search for our dads (he was highly distractable, part of what made him so much fun in the first place as a walk in the woods becomes a wander when one's partner is willing to explore the tributaries off the familiar trod path). I don't think I was all that scared, though I knew my position was precarious. I trusted that my spindly arms would hold me until my dad got there (and I was glad my mother wasn't home that day, not because she would be unable to help me, but she might get angry at us). The only thing that was a little bit unbearable was not knowing how long the wait would be. My father's indeterminate location, the length of time I had left in this lurch. This was uncomfortable, unfamiliar. It through my barometer off.
Eventually I saw my father, playmate, and playmate's father in the curious half-ligjht of the barn. And my father very capably pulled me out of the chute, wiped the hay off that now coated my clothes and hair, and made me promise not to tell my mother about this. We then went inside and ate something (it wasn't lunchtime, but another odd feature of my free-range childhood was we were always eating, and not snacks like granola bars, but proxy meals, like sandwiches of butter, ham, and pickles). The incident was forgotten. I only told my mother a few years ago, which prompted a rolled eye from her and a few choice words about my fathers lacksidaisical approach to supervision (though she was hardly more stringent).
Now as I reflect on the event, it seems wonderfully emblematic of the type of childhood I had: blissfully free and unencumbered by a haze of activities that I had no real interest in. Yet is also seems a bit sad to me, because now I find it so hard to stare down free time without a plan for what activity will fill which space. I'm not sure if this is a symptom from years of rigorous schooling that came later, where I brushed shoulders and became friends with numerous type-A sorts who scheduled, well, everything (studying, sex, eating, binge-drinking), or whether it's just a sign of emerging adulthood and the impulse to make every hour a productive one, one that puts me closer to some end or goal, regardless of how trivial it might be. And the nagging sense of things being indeterminate has only become more acute since my wee triceps held me up. Now I worry about time all the time; filling it, not having enough of it, and its ultimate indetermineate-ness. I do not know when I will get my next promotion at work, meet my husband (if I ever have one), have my children (if I ever have them), move into a bigger house or a new state, yet there is still the sense that things should arrive on schedule., just as college followed high school and the boogeymen specter of the "real world" followed college.
And still, I learned when I hung between those two floors of the red barn, it doesn't work that way. Things may happen suddenly, or slowly, or not at all. The only thing you need to know is that your arms can hold you up while you're waiting.
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