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# Recovering Childhood
- URL: https://www.smoothpebbles.org/recovering-childhood/
- Published: 2026-01-03T02:47:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-04T02:47:41.000Z
- Author: Richard Flanders

Obligations of adult life  
Fulfilling purpose  
The sanctity of vocation  
Deadlines, schedules, pressures  
Responsibilities honored  
Providing shelter, comforts  
Familial warmth and security  
Yet …  
  
How precious are childhood memories  
How vibrant the smells  
How vivid the colors  
The seasons, the weather  
How fresh and new  
Amplified by acute senses  
  
How free we were  
With only one rule  
Be home before the street lights lit  
  
All free time was spent with friends, outdoors  
Exploring, playing, riding bicycles  
Finding tadpoles in streams  
Dirt clod wars with neighboring blocks  
Building kites, airplanes, rockets  
Scratch games of every sort  
And books to carry us away  
  
We lived as immortals  
As if it would never end  
Scrapes and bruises were nothing  
The low cost of admission  
  
Now, though as senses dull  
I catch a whiff of freshness after rain  
Or a spectacular sky  
Or flowers arrayed magnificently  
And I’m carried back to those days  
When I’d lay in a grassy field for hours  
Finding shapes in the clouds or stars  
  
How thankful I am for childhood  
How wonderful to occasionally revisit  
Memories that reappear  
I will not mind the loss of short term memory  
If I may keep the glorious ones forever