Imagine This April Edition

Childhood Revisited Long years have passed since my memory first was born.

Peering through the curtain now, with curiosity anew I hear the deep throated mournful horn of the ship at sea as we sailed to the Panama Canal Zone, orders from the Air Force directing my Dad's path and all the family!

I remember, that first Christmas there; could Santa find us ?

I would wonder.. and yet , all was there under the tree that year, including a blue two wheeler and the doll I longed for with an eight year old heart, cocked her blue eye at me under the tree !

I remember the afternoon rains, falling predictably every afternoon, causing steam to rise above the horizon of the jungle trees.

The girl down the street had a monkey for a pet.

We fed him fat caterpillars and he flicked off their heads in an instant, popping them in his mouth, looking at me, quizzically.

How fun it was to be eight and free!

We would climb on lava rocks, grey and pitted; what a story they could tell, I later learned of hot molten fire paths flowing from a now dormant volcano leaving the rock in its path, to become my childhood plaything to clamber upon!

"I will be Jane , and you be Tarzan" I could hear my young clear voice come back to me from far up in that jungle tree, holding a vine, just like in the movie!

Verdant green was everywhere parakeets took to the air in splashes of yellow, green and blue, their squawking unmistakable as they flew!

From the brownie hut I would walk each week on my small bare feet to our concrete villas down the hill nestled in the jungle clearing with their baked tile roofs reddish brown, and red bougainvillea bushes growing up the staircases to the first floor, the carports underneath in an open garage, where our car was waiting.

I grew up like a little queen, of that jungle land, no dream!

I was the child of a military officer and privileged far more than most I would come to know!

By Becky Goddard Rizek. October 10, 2010 Click here to follow Becky on LinkedIn.