Halfway down the stairs
Is a stair
Where I sit.
There isn't any
Other stair
Quite like
It.
I'm not at the bottom,
I'm not at the top;
So this is the stair
Where
I always
Stop.
Halfway up the stairs
Isn't up,
And isn't down.
it isn't in the nursery,
it isn't in the town.
And all sorts of funny thoughts
Run round my head:
"It isn't really
Anywhere!
It's somewhere else
Instead!"
— A. A. Milne
“Halfway Down,” When We Were Very Young
Thinking of your childhood as a stairway, when did you feel (and how did you feel then)
1. at the bottom?
The bottoms related a lot to my introverted tendency to internalise and concretise the religious messages I heard - so that when I got home from school and my mother was not in the house (of course she was usually out the back in garden or whatever) my immediate gut reaction was that the stories were true and Jesus had come again and I was not good enough and had been left behind. The real bottom was one particular day when a sibling was being subjected to an undeserved punishment and I was torn between lying and saying that I committed the misdemeanour (which I hadn't but it would have spared the pain of someone younger than me) and acting like Jesus who took the punishment (but he never had to lie and say he had done something wrong when he hadn't).
2. at the top?
That total security of being loved and part of a world and universe much bigger than myself that also comes from a conservative evangelical background. Stories of faith were lived out in our immediate and extended family with aunts and parents' cousins coming back from their exotic 'overseas' (see below) missionary endeavours with ivory tusked elephant statues and eloborate carpets, songs in strange tongues and faces that seemed to reflect a joy and passion that was inspiring and contagious.
3. halfway?
Those moments of realising that my parents were not indeed 'all-knowing' Two occasions that come to mind are asking my father how the colour of my dress came out the same colour in the photograph he took and he tried spinning me a line about a little man inside the camera who painted the colours onto the film. And asking why New Zealand was only one place but 'overseas' was lots of places. Again poor Dad bore the brunt of this as he explained that there were a lot of places in New Zealand. I just knew that the difference between Hamilton and Auckland was NOT THE SAME the difference between France and Scotland. But I couldn't work out how to ask my question. It felt kind of frustrating. Looking back I just love my perception that there were two constitutional entities "New Zealand" and "overseas". Links to my bemusement at reading an English children's illustrated dictionary where the definition of 'abroad' (a term we didn't use in the antipodes) showed a man in a suit with a case and the explanatory sentence was something like 'Uncle went abroad'.
4. At this point in your life, where would you place yourself on your own stairway?
This can only be answered by Doug Savage
5. Identify a place for you that "isn't really anywhere" but "somewhere else instead."
The train (or bus) - the daily commute. It's not in the household, it's not in the town; it's not at the desktop, it's not at the sink; it's not with my family, it's not with my students. One of the reasons I resist getting a laptop to start work en route. And why the train is probably where more than 80% of my iPod listening and my knitting occurs. It is somewhere else instead!
