Reconnecting with that Wilder Bond

WordSmith

Gerard Smith

The child we were never leaves us. That kid is still there, all their hopes, dreams and fears hiding away in our adult-addled hearts and minds. There’s catharsis in reconnecting with our inner-child, to the point that ‘Inner-Child-Therapy’ is now widely practiced.

Regular readers of this column will know I reflect a lot on childhood; and I write not in search of healing from any past trauma (thankfully), but simply to hug the kid I was, because in that there’s a kind of gentle therapy. Also, in telling of our childhood we document and preserve people and places from the past; for I believe it’s up to us to ‘curate’ our own posterity.

‘Curate’ it’s a word often associated with museums and galleries; and as such I was delighted to be contacted by a curator from The Museum of Childhood Ireland, Músaem Óige na hÉireann, to contribute a piece for a current project ‘That wilder bond'.

The genesis of the project is in a beautiful poem ‘Wilder Bond’ by Nicolette Sowder:

May we raise children

who love the unloved things – the dandelion,

The worms & spiderlings.

Children who sense

the rose needs the thorn

and run into rainswept days

the same way they turn towards sun…

And when they’re grown &

someone has to speak for those

who have no voice

may they draw upon that

wilder bond, those days of

tending tender things

and be the ones.

The following words from the museum explain more, “That wilder Bond invites participants to share their childhood memories, connecting personal stories to Ireland’s rich social history on the theme of nature and the environment. Stories lie at the heart of Ireland’s under-explored childhood social and cultural history, intangible artefacts that reveal our living history and are important contributions to Irish oral and local history, to our society and environment, for future us…”

They say we have differing ages for our inner-child, mine is seven; and it’s him I’ve sent to The Museum of Childhood Ireland.

I tell of a glorious summer of freedom exploring the hills and vales of Cavan’s drumlin landscape. And more, I write of a special connection I formed with a hermetic elder man, my friend Johnnie. I’d like to briefly share another time spent with Johnnie, wherein he told me of a most unusual ghost.

Johnnie lived in a dilapidated house in Cavan’s wilderness; during my summer of seven we developed a special bond.

I was obsessed with discovering the identity of a ghost my dad saw when he was my age. Adults grew tired of my incessant ghost questions. Johnnie never tired of me, so one afternoon I cut through the woods to Johnnie’s house.

It was a large farmhouse, yet Johnnie lived in one tiny back room. Mother nature had moved into the room as flora and fauna grew up through the compacted earth floor.

Hordes of newspapers and other detritus surged up and down like stalactites and stalagmites in a neolithic cave.

In this ancient space I asked Johnnie, “Do you believe in ghosts?” He didn’t hesitate, “Indeed I do.”

He paused a moment, “There’s no harm to be had in a ghost.” My interest piqued, “Have you ever seen one?” He pointed to a door in the darkness, “No, that’s why I do never open that door, too many ghosts in them rooms.” He lowered his head, “I’m safer here.” Confused, I said, “You said there’s no harm in a ghost.”

Such was the dark I couldn’t see his soot blackened face, but I vividly recall the pink of his gums as he spoke, “The old days are in there, they do give me the lonesome...” I’d never heard of ‘The lonesome’ and concluded it was a ghost that haunted older Irish men, like ‘The Banshee’ haunted the elder women in my life.

Now, I’m in the Library writing this column. Opposite me is a man of a similar age to me, I know him in passing; he’s reading The Anglo-Celt.

When he closes the paper he looks up and I instinctively look over; our eyes meet and he says something that floors me, “Gerard, do you remember the man with the donkey and cart, Johnnie Simons?” When I picked my jaw off the floor, my old friend Johnnie lived on the lips of the living as we shared our memories of him – it was a divine-like moment.

The Wilder Bond asks the contributors to include pictures of ourselves then and now, it’s bittersweetly beautiful to see my inner child next to my current self.

To find out more about the museum, or contribute a piece to The Wilder Bond project visit: https://museumofchildhood.ie/

Contributions welcomed in English and As Gaeilge.