Sometimes it was a pretence, following, as a lot of it was in Latin, but I don't remember ever feeling bored, not mind numbingly so anyway. I liked the ritual of it, the incense that was swung up, down and over the aisles, and the passing of the collection plate, though I think I enjoyed the car ride to Portsmouth more, because when it wasn't Pop's turn we travelled in a Rolls. A racing green one, though on that my memory might be deceiving me, but the interior was definitely cream leather, and John, the driver and family friend, it has to be said, had a sinful side. Sinful in a Roald Dahlesque kind of way, because other than his humour he was a gentle, noble and benevolent giant who towered over everyone, including his more fragile and soft wife, Mary.
He was the stuff of fairy tales, or at least then that's how it seemed, but then everything to me did. People and places were all enchanted: Pop was a troll, Nan was a good witch, John was a giant, Mary was a fairy godmother, one of my cousins was Pinocchio and another was a boisterous comic book hero...such is an imaginative child's mental imagery, not that they always kept to the roles assigned. John was Bluebeard sometimes, Nan was the old woman in the woods trapping children in Hansel and Gretel, which is not to suggest I feared them, not in the slightest, just that my mind boggled with the fantastical and experienced no difficulties in transferring it to the world I was living in. All was given free rein, although I might not have spoken such fantasies aloud.
I was quiet, as quiet as a mouse. No trouble. There. My parents might have reported different at home: a little madam, possibly. Not naughty, but prone to tantrums and whines. Whereas here I was in my Nan's words: 'A poppet' and 'As good as gold'. And although I'm sure that was true, can I really have been that good all the time?
I liked best of all having them all to myself and integrating myself into their sleepier way of life, that of chores such as grocery shopping, cooking, eating, dropping into friends or friends dropping in and walks to the beach with Sam dog. I was perfectly comfortable being around and with adults, not so much with children who were older, younger or of the same age, especially if play was prolonged, including cousins or the neighbours' offspring. Adults were so much more interesting.
I still think that today. The truism I told myself is the same too: those I find intriguing are usually at least a decade, no make that two or three, older than me, unless there's a rare quality about them or something in their background from which I can learn. The problem is as I get older I'll run out of candidates...those whose company I enjoy, learn from and look up to; there's no way I ever want a little or young person to consider me in the same manner, but not due, as you might think, to my awkwardness around children, but because I don't think I'd have anything useful (or of note) to impart. And isn't it strange that you can remember being a child and yet you don't know how to converse with one when you've grown? I never get it right; either I find myself talking down or talking way above them, or talking of something far beyond anything they might have experienced or are likely to because that time has gone and they're not at the stage to be interested. Often too, they have experiences I don't, and I'm glad I haven't had.
Yet my own childish insight into the adult world started in such a way. I wasn't treated as according to my stature which is to say I was included and consulted, and my questions, though annoying, were answered. I didn't always understand them nor were they always the answers I wanted or hoped for, but then neither are those we receive from God or the Cosmos.
Picture credit: Fall of Rebel Angels, Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
