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2. A Carefree Beginning: 1933 to 1939
- University of Wisconsin Press
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30 2 A Carefree Beginning 1933 to 1939 Once when I was three or just four I received a fascinating tiny little vase painted with delicate blue flowers on a white background, and while admiring it in the company of Mother and two of my sisters I accidentally dropped it. When it broke in two I picked up the pieces and asked Mother to make the vase whole again. “Impossible,” she said. “Once broken, nothing can ever be made whole again. The pieces can be glued together, but the vase will never be as it was before.” On hearing this I threw a rare tantrum and rolled about on the floor, but no one picked me up to console me or help me to grapple with the existential discovery I had made. For it was in this instant that I first understood, with a shock, the irreversible direction of time, the meaning of wholeness, and the awesome finality of death as brokenness. Luckily moments like these were very rare, however, in my young life. Indeed, the most striking facet of my growth from infancy to boyhood is that usually it was so carefree. Looking back on myself from my present perspective, I see a child without worries. Here was a happy-golucky infant and later a schoolboy without much foresight, a child who took the world as it came, with only the occasional fugitive moment of intense drama as in the tragedy of the broken vase. For quite a while I remained mostly unaware that I was growing up at all. I suppose that I first became vaguely aware of it when I was taken to the barbershop for the first time “like a big boy.” Trailing behind Father, I went the usual way to our parish church, but once on the church square Father pushed open the gold-lettered glass door of a shop nearby, and we went inside. There I was, perched high on a regular chair watching as the barber spread a Santa-like beard of soap on the face of the white-cloaked person A Carefree Beginning 31 he was shaving. Then he produced a huge straight razor, scintillating in the harsh light of the work station, and in a few strokes wiped everything away. When my turn came I sat very still, though this time the fearsome razor did not appear; on me he used only scissors. Later a number of other recurring events, insignificant in themselves but telling as a sequence , fostered my self-awareness of growth, such as measuring my height against the wall or growing out of my clothes, until at last I began to attend school. From then onward I was constantly reminded of my place on the ladder to adulthood. In contrast to myself, my parents were well aware of the process of growing up and of their responsibilities in that regard. From the beginning of each child’s life they left little to chance. All of us were carefully brought up according to clear pedagogical rules and a strict timetable. As the seventh living child, my development followed a well-worn groove blazed by my seniors, and progress was measured year after year by a string of achievements that by this time my parents took in stride. By the end of the first year the cradle was swapped for a small bed. By the end of the second year the child was beginning to talk and walk, and his or her first hair had been cut and kept as a souvenir. And so on. Two weeks before I turned four I was sent to kindergarten, and after that further progress was measured by scholastic reports. Some of my parents’ core pedagogical principles differed significantly from those that are now usual in the United States. Outbursts of temper were ignored. A child who threw a tantrum was left alone, with the consequence that very few tantrums were thrown. Displays or expressions of emotions of any kind were frowned upon as “sentimental” and signs of bad taste, if not also of a lack of courage. Feelings could be expressed, but only in restrained fashion, in a tasteful way, and only at appropriate times. Another rule was that children should have a chance to be children and should not be exposed to situations or questions beyond their understanding. We were to be shielded as much as possible from any unpleasantness in the outside world, including current events. That also meant that we...