她不常生病。我祖父的心脏不是很好。

我无精打采地在秋千上来回荡着，觉得很孤单。我希望能有人陪我玩。

突然，我看到了我要的人――我的祖父，他下班回来了。“爷爷!”我欢快地喊着，“快来推我一把！”

他的脸突然间变得煞白，我从没见过他那种表情，“你不该出来玩。”他粗声地对我说，好像我做了不该做的事。

“但是，”我想告诉他我只是做了大人告诉我的事情而已。“快下雨了。”他突然说。我抬头困惑地看着晴朗的蓝天，一点儿云彩也没有。

“跟我走！”他的声音中透着一丝绝望。

当我们一起上楼梯时，他抓着我的手，紧紧地抓着，好像需要什么东西支撑似的。我似乎被某种预兆紧紧地抓着。后来，我才意识到，那一刻，代表了我童年的终结。

What were you like as a child  Serious, responsible  Happy-go-lucky  Sweet-natured  Hyperactive  A playground bully  Or a timid creature clinging to your mother’s skirt 

I spent my childhood as a fly on the wall: looking, listening, taking in impressions of the world around me. Some were awesome, reassuring: warmth and kindness, glimpses of pure joy; others worrying, confounding: falsehood and pretensions, spite, aggression and scorn.

Uncertain what to make of it all, I kept my observations and reflections strictly to myself.

Today I’m still the same fly on the wall, though somewhat less bemused, having taken on board some vital lessons of sympathy and compassion, tolerance and forgiveness.

Also, over the years I have acquired enough confidence to articulate my thoughts and, at length, summoned the courage to share them this way.

We’re tempted to change as we grow older, in response to adult pressures: roles we are expected to perform, personally, professionally; standards set by our contemporaries, not forgetting the natural urge to develop and mature.

But our basic disposition remains the same. And rather than distance ourselves from what we were as children, we should take good care of our original equipment.

As long as it’s put to good use, there will always be room for it in the adult world.

Early memories can be deceptive, in that they are usually quite appealing. As if, in the whole range of emotions experienced by a young child, pleasure is the main one to register.

This innocent, infantile inclination to acknowledge only the positive may be a protective mechanism designed to build up our morale as a bulwark against difficulties ahead.

Or else these impressions are part of a myth created by ourselves, saying more about us than about our childhood.

Even so ? they have to emanate from somewhere.

I recall ? or believe that I recall ? lying in my pram, being wheeled through a forest, watching high above the sun-lit tops of giant fir-trees standing out deep green against a clear blue sky dotted with cotton-wool clouds. Birds are singing, brooks are babbling, the air has the fresh tang of earth and conifers.

Closer to, my mother’s face: her eyes sad, lost in the distance. I call out to her, and she smiles. I smile back. Now we are both happy.

And I have a cosy recollection of her in middle of the night, coming to lift me out of my cot, taking me to her bed, where we curl up together. I go back to sleep in her soft warm embrace, clutched by her like a teddy bear.

Giving comfort, though I know nothing about grief, have no way of comprehending the meaning of despair.

“But I had a happy childhood!” protested the man, to whom I’d tactfully suggested that his chronic health problems might be somehow related to the traumas I knew had overshadowed his early years.

We were close enough for me to gently challenge his assertion: “But with your mother dying so early… And not having a father…That must have been difficult.”