Mariella Gattini

When it comes to childhood we all want to think that it is, and was, an idyllic time—a moment in our development when we didn’t have anything to do other than be ourselves, and play with the idea of living our lives to the fullest. Somebody else was in charge of the reality of things. Someone was taking care of all the details that we didn’t understand and didn’t care about at all.

This idealism is a necessary trick we need in our minds to think that our past is something we have at hand to use as a stabilizer, as a base to stand straight in order to keep going.

In most cases, children are at the mercy of the projection of their parents, whether present or absent. When those parents are unprepared, unwilling, or lack the necessary means to take care of their offspring they build a breach, a gap, between their children and themselves that only expands over time.

An unsuitable parent is the one who abandons, be it because of their laissez-faire parenting style, or because they literally go somewhere else—even for a brief period of time—leaving their kids in the hands of less than prepared strangers.

In any case, the upbringing of children is, even today, about the parents and not about the kids. If the adults suffered some kind of abandonment issue when they where young, they are going to be all over their children, like hawks or helicopters, always supervising in constant follow-ups. If they were mistreated and repressed all the time when they were young, they are going to allow their kids to do anything to the point of rearing wolves. If they were allowed to be whoever they wanted to, to the extreme of feeling alone and neglected, they are going to become stoic authority figures made of rules and requirements, totally bureaucratic and bucolic.

There is more than one way to be a parent, of course, but, in general, it’s always more about the parents than it is about the children. Some want to project their own deep frustrations and expect their kids to follow their non-taken roads or, on the opposite spectrum, their own profession, seeking, in each case, their own satisfaction in life. In one way or another, and no matter the quality of the parenting, children grow up and, most importantly, they remember. They keep in their minds everything, even the most suppressed of memories. All those things that their parents didn’t think they heard or understood. And, if they are good quality individuals, they are able to use those memories to build their own lives for the better, using the bad recollections as a reminder of how not to be, how not to treat others, and the good impressions as structure and building blocks for a new and improved life.

The more you live, the more you see the results of bad parenting everywhere, but you also see what really works when it comes to building good relationships with those around us so that you can pass it on to somebody who was cheated by life.

Although what we learn is not purely intellectual, and the real apprehension of life comes from our direct contact with the ones closest to us, we can, through a thorough intellectual effort, trim out what doesn’t work, and allow those budding branches in our mind to grow and flourish. In that way, the one who was once forgotten is now someone with his or her own identity provided by themselves and their most cherished individuals, integrated to a caring community knowledgeable of the consequences of neglect, and of how the suffering of a few is the suffering of us all.

Nobody is perfect, but there is a deep inequality between the ones cared for and the neglected ones. The good news is that neglected or not we all are thinking individuals who can count on language to expand our vision and the acceptance of ourselves, so that we all, together, can be the safety net that some of us will need when we falter, because, above all, everything we need is in our heads.

It’s true that we can not go back and do it all over again, but it’s also true that, as long as we live, we have enough material to work with to enhance our reach in understanding and development. The more we think, the more we are, and the more we heal, if we need to.

My six-year-old feet, submerged in crystalline water, were stepping on colorful pebbles softened by the currents of a meandering creek. I was taken by the hand by a native Bolivian woman who was working on the parsley crops in the terraces of the Andes. I was so happy in the company of these women, looking at the wonderful view of the mountains, the breeze, the joyful stream, and the sun getting away, leaving an orange shade behind. Later, I would reunite with my parents to continue my summer vacation.

Nothing in the memory described above is idealized. It is a mere recollection of facts, however, only the image of that day makes me happy, as happy as I was then. This is one of my building blocks for a life well lived, a life where I was present, acknowledged by the women around me. In exchange, I took them and the love for parsley with me for the rest of my life. The aroma of parsley evokes a point in time and space located deep in my mind. I acknowledge these women every time, and, as far as I’m concerned, they will never be forgotten.