Columnists
The tense past
Sarah Dean
Sorting through the detritus of childhood retrieved from a
parental loft is a task that I have found to be part nostalgia,
part mortifying embarrassment and part terrifying, psychological
insight into the adult you. You need to be emotionally strong and
ruthless in chucking stuff out. For example while the diary I wrote
when I was eight was hilariously grandiose and written with a view
that it would one day be 'discovered and read by future
generations' I decided the British Library probably didn't need my
painstaking records of what we had for tea, how cute Samanatha's
gerbil is and what I watched on telly (Blankety Blank and Mash
mostly). Likewise I did not reread the teenage notebooks containing
way too detailed accounts of snogging boys at gigs.
One thing I did hang onto was a primary school creative writing
book. Alongside some pretty groundbreaking poems about autumn
leaves ('Scrunch. Scrunch') and fireworks ('Whoosh! Bang!'), there
was an incredibly telling essay called 'What I dream about'. The
opening line is 'The things I dream about the most are being at
Brownies and Nuclear War.' Whoa there! That's some textbook early
80s childhood neuroses you've got there Past-Me! I don't really
remember the dreams about skipping round the toadstool, saluting
Brown Owl and doing my hostess badge, but I do remember all too
clearly waking up terrified due dreaming that the three minute
warning had gone off.
This subconscious terror wasn't surprising. A voracious reader,
I had scared the living daylights out of myself by reading several
dystopian, post-nuclear YA novels at the local library when I was
far too Y and nowhere near being an A. Plus my Dad believed in
telling children the truth and so his response to my question 'What
would happen if a nuclear bomb went off?' was basically a
blow-by-blow account of the 80s TV programme Threads, including a
detailed description of radiation sickness. On reflection a bit
more lying and make believe would have suited this
sleep-deprived-child turned- anxious-adult just fine thanks.
Another mind-bending and precocious essay I found was called
'Why God is for adults and Jesus is for children'. My premise
seemed to be that there are lots of illustrations of Jesus in
Children's' Bibles but no pictures of God, meanwhile in Bibles for
adults there are no illustrations of either Jesus or God. Therefore
I concluded that adults can cope with believing in a God they can't
see while kids can't, so Jesus, God-made-man, is God's way of
helping us kiddies along in our faith.
Obviously my argument renders Jesus, the author and perfector of
our faith as a bit of an add-on, but you can see my logic. As the
Psalmist says 'Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings', and
rereading definitely got me thinking about the necessity of
incarnation.
I remember writing the essay at home and taking it out to my
Dad, who was cleaning the car . His terrifyingly honest response
was 'No, we (adults) find it hard to believe in a God we can't see
too' and he went back to hosing down the Cortina. At this point I
added the salvation of my Dad to the list of things to lie awake
worrying about.