When I was a kid, my friends and I knew the real meaning of playing outdoors and having fun. Through our parents, we learned from the very beginning the necessity of sharing things with others and the value of relationships rather than material things.
I have four siblings and my childhood memories are filled with kids playing with us on the street of my simple neighborhood. I remember having many family members including cousins, aunts, and uncles over at my grandparents' home that lived on a farm. We didn’t have many toys, but we didn’t even care about it, once we had the companionship of our brothers and friends, with whom we had a lot of fun most of the days.
At that time we didn't have video games, then, we had to give wings to the imagination. We enjoyed the contact with nature, we knew how to build our toys, we could have different kinds of pets and we learned a lot of things by and with them, we fight with our friends and we learned by ourselves how to make it up! That's how I grew up...
We were freer at that time. It was so normal having our feet dusty from walking barefoot on the streets and in our large backyards! I remember clearly that it didn’t sound strange to ask our parents to spend the whole day in our neighbors’ place and it was so common to receive a “Yes, why not?” as well! We were real children and we knew the real innocence.
At that time, we first learned the importance of relationships, we didn’t know the word “hospitality”, but we knew what it means in practice, once our house was always full of people. We were not so suspicious, so fearful, so selfish… We were happier, just because the world and life were pretty uncomplicated in those times.
Nan
