Daily Prompt: Childhood Revisited

What is your earliest memory? Describe in detail, and tell us why you think that experience was the one to stick with you.

I love thinking of my childhood a lot. It was my most happy days. I had a  lot of siblings, I loved playing with them, they didn’t mind having me, even if their friends came along.

One of my earliest memories of my childhood was that of my Dad. My brothers’ friends thought he was handsome and resembled Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Now that I think of it I feel, the reason might be, he was tall and thin like Mohammed Ali Jinnah. My Dad loved speaking English. He believed any language we speak must be spoken correctly.

He was very particular about our mother tongue, Bengali. In our house we were encouraged to learn different languages, but  the rule was, we  must speak our mother tongue when we were in  the house.

He told us he did not want his children to be upstarts, at that time I did not know what the word meant. This much I knew we must not speak any other language with each other when we were at home.

In Bengali we have a lot of dialects, if one is  from a certain district the dialect is different. My mom grew up in a village near the little town named ‘Feni’, district Noakhali  she spoke the dialect from  that district, since we interacted with Mom more than Dad we spoke the Noakhali dialect.  My dad probably was concerned because we did not speak proper Bengali. He made sure we heard the proper speech too. Whenever he spoke to us he spoke  proper Bengali.

One day I was playing outside with the neighbors, I noticed some kids playing with yellow balls. I was fascinated and wanted to have one. I was six years old and didn’t know how tired my Dad was when he came home from work.

My Dad’s usual greeting was,  “ma Ranu kaimon achho?”(Ranu how are you?)

I wasted no time telling him I wanted a yellow ball just like the boys were playing with. My Dad didn’t get a chance to go into the house, he turned around and left, in the meantime I forgot all about it until I saw my Dad back with four yellow balls.You must be wondering why four, he knew my siblings would ask for it too.

This is the fondest memory I have of my Dad. I used to tell my husband, if our children want something, don’t say you do not need it, but buy it for them.

I feel the lesson I learned from my Dad is never say no to our children, when they ask for something, provided it’s within our means. It makes a child happy.

…………………………………:)

 

Daily Prompt: Childhood Revisited

Sure,you turned out pretty good, but is there anything you wish were different about your childhood?If you have kids,is there anything you wish were different for them?

I love revisiting my childhood, I had the best time in my life. I worried about nothing. My favorite pastime was playing with my siblings.

Studying always took a backseat in those days.As long as I did not flunk out it was fine with me. My parents did not have a whole lot of expectation from me.

I lived a life of pleasure, eating, singing and playing just about summed up my life  those days.

Then everything changed, my father died, we had to leave our comfortable home and move away to my parents homeland. I disliked everything about it, too many cousins, aunts uncles who made it their business to tell us what we should and shouldn’t do.

Although the vendors, the milkman, and the ad of movies was a novelty for me. This was something I liked and appreciated, it told me there’s more to life than, cousins, uncles and aunts.

Looking back on those days, I wonder what kind of a student I could have been, if I concentrated on my studies a little more. My teachers never told me I was stupid, they were happy with my work. They probably would have liked me better for working harder and I could become my teacher’s pet. Even now this thought does not agree with my personality.

In the end I’d only say, I like what I did. Nothing can equal the pleasure I had as one would say,”it was a blast!”

…………………………………..:)

365 days Writing Prompt: Childhood revisited

Sure, you turned out pretty good, but is there anything you wish were different about your childhood? If you have kids, is there anything you wish were different for them?

Yes I wished my father was alive when we were growing up, we didn’t have to move away from our favorite city. I’d graduate from the same school and maintain my friendship with the kids who were in my class. It would be so awesome.

For my kids I wished they didn’t have to deal with kids who were mean, because their background was different, i.e., we the parents were from Bangladesh. You wouldn’t think kids at that age would know the difference.But the words echo in my mind,”Children learn what they live.”

k: https://sabethville.wordpress.com/2015/02/09/365-days-writi…hood-revisited