Borrowing Their Childhood

There is something about sitting with our grandparents and listening to them talk about their childhood.

They don’t always tell us stories with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Sometimes, they simply remember.

A rainy season.
A school they had to walk to.
A mother calling them home.
A park they used to run through.
A little thing they found growing after the rain.

And somehow, while they are remembering their yesterday, we find ourselves smiling in our today.

I was listening to my Nani talk about the rains she grew up with. About how it would rain for days, how they would still make their way to school, and how, when the rain finally stopped, her mother would take them to the park to look for little mushrooms that had appeared after the showers.

She wasn’t telling me a grand story.

But I could almost see it.

A younger version of her, running around in a world I never knew. A little girl with her siblings, her mother, her own little routines, her own version of ordinary.

And perhaps that is what makes these conversations so special.

We get to meet the people we love before they became the people we know.

We know our grandparents as Nani and Nanu.
As the people who worried if we had eaten.
The people who asked where we were going.
The people who had their own ways of loving us, sometimes loudly and sometimes without saying much at all.

But when they talk about childhood, we suddenly see them differently.

They were once children too.

They had favourite places.
They had friends.
They got into trouble.
They went to school on rainy mornings.
They had mothers who called them home.
They had little joys that felt enormous at the time.

And listening to them talk about these things makes us realise that before they became a part of our childhood, they had one of their own.

Maybe that’s why their memories bring such a strange kind of smile to our faces.

Because we aren’t only listening to the past.

For a few minutes, we are allowed to enter it.

We imagine the streets they walked through.
The homes they grew up in.
The voices that once called their names.
The people they loved who may no longer be here.
The little things that made an ordinary day worth remembering.

And sometimes, we hear a story they’ve probably told a hundred times before.

Yet we listen again.

Because there is something deeply beautiful about hearing someone we love become young again through their memories.

Their voice changes a little.

Their eyes light up.

They remember a name they haven’t said in years.

They laugh at something that happened decades ago.

And suddenly, the years between their childhood and ours don’t feel quite so enormous.

We may not have lived through the same rains.

We may never know what their school looked like, what their neighbourhood sounded like, or what their mother’s kitchen smelled like.

But through their stories, we get little glimpses.

And perhaps that is one of the most beautiful ways of spending time with our grandparents.

Ask them about their childhood.

Not because you need a story.

Not because you’re trying to preserve history.

Just sit with them.

Ask what school was like.

What they did when it rained.

What they played.

What their parents were like.

What made them happy.

What they were afraid of.

What they did when they were bored.

And listen.

Because one day, those ordinary conversations may become some of the most precious memories we have.

And perhaps, years from now, when we remember them, we won’t remember exactly what they said.

We’ll remember the way their face lit up while telling us.

We’ll remember the smile that appeared on ours.

And we’ll realise that for a few moments, we didn’t just listen to their childhood.

We borrowed it.

IF THIS RESONATED WITH YOU…