她不常生病。我祖父的心臟不是很好。

我無精打采地在秋千上來回蕩著，覺得很孤單。我希望能有人陪我玩。

突然，我看到了我要的人――我的祖父，他下班回來了?！盃敔?”我歡快地喊著，“快來推我一把！”

他的臉突然間變得煞白，我從沒見過他那種表情，“你不該出來玩?！彼致暤貙?duì)我說，好像我做了不該做的事。

“但是，”我想告訴他我只是做了大人告訴我的事情而已。“快下雨了?！彼蝗徽f。我抬頭困惑地看著晴朗的藍(lán)天，一點(diǎn)兒云彩也沒有。

“跟我走！”他的聲音中透著一絲絕望。

當(dāng)我們一起上樓梯時(shí)，他抓著我的手，緊緊地抓著，好像需要什么東西支撐似的。我似乎被某種預(yù)兆緊緊地抓著。后來，我才意識(shí)到，那一刻，代表了我童年的終結(jié)。

What were you like as a child  Serious, responsible  Happy-go-lucky  Sweet-natured  Hyperactive  A playground bully  Or a timid creature clinging to your mother’s skirt 

I spent my childhood as a fly on the wall: looking, listening, taking in impressions of the world around me. Some were awesome, reassuring: warmth and kindness, glimpses of pure joy; others worrying, confounding: falsehood and pretensions, spite, aggression and scorn.

Uncertain what to make of it all, I kept my observations and reflections strictly to myself.

Today I’m still the same fly on the wall, though somewhat less bemused, having taken on board some vital lessons of sympathy and compassion, tolerance and forgiveness.

Also, over the years I have acquired enough confidence to articulate my thoughts and, at length, summoned the courage to share them this way.

We’re tempted to change as we grow older, in response to adult pressures: roles we are expected to perform, personally, professionally; standards set by our contemporaries, not forgetting the natural urge to develop and mature.

But our basic disposition remains the same. And rather than distance ourselves from what we were as children, we should take good care of our original equipment.

As long as it’s put to good use, there will always be room for it in the adult world.

Early memories can be deceptive, in that they are usually quite appealing. As if, in the whole range of emotions experienced by a young child, pleasure is the main one to register.

This innocent, infantile inclination to acknowledge only the positive may be a protective mechanism designed to build up our morale as a bulwark against difficulties ahead.

Or else these impressions are part of a myth created by ourselves, saying more about us than about our childhood.

Even so ? they have to emanate from somewhere.

I recall ? or believe that I recall ? lying in my pram, being wheeled through a forest, watching high above the sun-lit tops of giant fir-trees standing out deep green against a clear blue sky dotted with cotton-wool clouds. Birds are singing, brooks are babbling, the air has the fresh tang of earth and conifers.

Closer to, my mother’s face: her eyes sad, lost in the distance. I call out to her, and she smiles. I smile back. Now we are both happy.

And I have a cosy recollection of her in middle of the night, coming to lift me out of my cot, taking me to her bed, where we curl up together. I go back to sleep in her soft warm embrace, clutched by her like a teddy bear.

Giving comfort, though I know nothing about grief, have no way of comprehending the meaning of despair.

“But I had a happy childhood!” protested the man, to whom I’d tactfully suggested that his chronic health problems might be somehow related to the traumas I knew had overshadowed his early years.

We were close enough for me to gently challenge his assertion: “But with your mother dying so early… And not having a father…That must have been difficult.”