I’m not sue why lately I keep thinking about my childhood. Some of the work I do in therapy requires me to go back to those days and really pay attention. I feel like Murnau’s Faust (a much less darker version, of course): hovering over my old schools, trying to listen to my childhood conversations with friends, amazed at how light and cheery I remember life being. Would it be safe to say that I won’t ever be as unafraid as I was when I was a child? I think it would. And I’m ok with that. But every once in a while –when I’m not sure who I am– “I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free”, as did Catherine Earnshaw when she yearned for the untamable spirit of the Yorkshire moors.
***
I thought it best to put these adventures and amazements in words, in case my memory once fails and I truly don’t remember who I am:
- I loved Maleficent. One Halloween I dressed up as her for a school show. I didn’t have time to change my shoes, so I very proudly sported my black outfit and make up with white girly shoes. Whenever I see the photo I feel my true nature shining through.- I used very weird words for a small human. Like the time I called my kindergarten classmates “abúlicos”. I’m not even sure I know what that means to this day.
- My mom had a go-to fruit lady near our house. And whenever I made an appearance, she would give a guayaba (guava is not a good word). This went on for many years. Some time ago, I went back there for… reasons… and the lady recognized me and, true to form, gave me said fruit. It felt like a gift to an Anaclara of the past.
- I used to do cartwheels anywhere and everywhere large enough to fit an over enthusiastic eight year old.
- I had this beautiful Russian friend named Polina, and we lived nearby so I hung out at her place sometimes. We made up a dance to “I Want to Hold Your Hand” by The Beatles. I thought we were so cool, but for some reason, maybe her Russian demeanor, she didn’t seem like a very happy kid to me.
- I adored drawing. The joy of drawing felt like very few.
- I thought about having a career as a bird-watcher.
- When I moved to England, we sometimes took a shortcut to my mother’s University. And it was muddy. Real muddy. Unaccustomed to the realities of British weather, I thought that mess was the funnest time of all. Sometimes I would wear some plastic bags over my boots to avoid childish disasters, and I was even more amused by this.
- My dear, dear mom let me dress up however I saw (un)fit. So I wore a spice girls crop-top, some glittery hairbands, a cow print vest and, of course, black mini-skirts over trousers.
- I danced. I danced every minute of every day.
- My lovely teacher Mrs. Thompson thought I was very creative but “too chatty.” An accurate assessment if I’ve ever heard one.
- I used to play a hand clapping game with my friends. We once made up some lyrics and choreography. It started like so: “I met a girl in Sweden, called eye-shoe-Shalyla. All the boys in the football field said ‘I love eye-shoe-Shylyla’"
- I earned a badge for winning three chess games in a row in our junior school chess club. Anya Taylor… who?
- Music classes were the best. We sang "Morning Has Broken” by Cat Stevens. And a song about socks: “Black socks, they never get dirty, the longer you wear them the stronger they get…”
- I got a kick out of beating boys at running fast. But I never had very close friends who were boys. They didn’t seem as appealing and fun as the girls.
- I had a purple bike that made some sort of odd sound when it rolled too fast. I thought it was unique and my parents could always tell when I was arriving home because of it. I rode it to see my friends. I made so many friends and so easily. No self-consciousness, no weird insecurities, just pure eagerness.
- I loved to sun bathe. I very frequently over did it and suffered the burning consequences of feeling invincible. But those tans though.
- Bonfires. Bonfires were magical.
- Me and my mom would walk down to a market near my house and buy some cheese empanadas that I have since idealized as the perfect empanada.- I had a bright orange goldfish who I named “mi amigo.” How cute is that? I also had a pair of ducklings who followed me everywhere.
- I was constantly braiding the girls’ hair in class. I found it relaxing and wasn’t really aware I was shamelessly turning the classroom into a hair salon.
- One of my first childish grudges was against the man who drove the ice-cream truck: I once gathered my pennies and asked for some very specific sweets. The small paper bag of these gummies cost fifty pence, and I when I got back in the house and opened it, they were not the sweets I had asked for. Such betrayal. It felt infuriating. I didn’t buy anything for weeks, until my mom convinced me to forgive the poor distracted man.- Whenever my family and I travelled to a foreign place, I was mesmerized by my father’s ability to know where we were going, how to pay, where to stay, how to find the way if we got lost. This, I think, gave me the confidence to be alone anywhere in the world and (try to) find a way.
- Arriving to Antwerp remains one of my favorite memories in life. I couldn’t (can’t) get over how magical it was. I was tired, so tired, because we walked for what seemed like forever, but I still couldn’t sleep that night because I was so excited to be in a city that felt like a fairytale. Who knew what we were going to encounter the next day? (tourists, mainly).
- I vividly remember where I was the first time I saw a mobile phone in action: it was 1999 and I was in a double decker in London. One person suddenly “rang”…and a few seconds later we could hear the other guy chatting with him downstairs. It was equal parts ridiculous and amazing.
- I spent my 9th birthday in Barcelona but against everyone’s wishes I decided to stay in my cousin’s house and play The Sims all day.
- My aunt lived in a very large house with doors everywhere. One door led to a small room, a corridor almost, which was preserved as such because it had beautiful original wood framing. My aunt collected witches and they all lived in there. One of them had a sensor, that made her laugh whenever someone walked by. I was terrified of walking through that dark room, sometimes I even crawled so the witch “didn’t see me.” And now I love witches.
- I once decided lamps were very boring and that I was going to decorate lamps and make them fun. And I did. A couple of them are still lying around, looking worse than they did in the first place.
- The best part of dancing in the Nutcracker as a little girl, was that we got to buy new dolls for the show. And styled our hairs with shiny voluminous Shirley Temple curls.
- During nutcracker season my friends and I used to tell horror stories backstage. A popular one was that the human sized nativity figures which were stored in the theatre’s warehouse were in fact haunted. Legend had it, a girl once went in there and saw their eyes move from one side to another.
***
It is hard to pinpoint when you cease to be a girl. The best I can come up with is this: my joyful childhood was over when I started looking at these as memories rather than possibilities.
I don’t feel like a child anymore (at least not everyday) but I definitely don’t feel like a grown-up either. Most of the time I feel like a strange kind of grown up, and I find so much charm in honoring my child self. I know that my Maleficent-costumed-persona is very proud of this lack of staidness, and whatever I do, I’m always secretly hoping I don’t betray her.
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“Dear Diaval…
If you were my man,I could kiss you during we fly in the sky,feeling the clouds in our skins and turn you into anything you’d like to be for me after this”.
-Maleficent.
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Happy Potter/Maleficent/Labyrinth Xover background prompt: There is more to the Fae courts then just the Summer and Winter Queens, there is also Jareth the only Fae King -water/land, and His counterpart, Maleficent, Queen of fire/air. Wizards know of the Fae because only they remember the times when the Moores were part of the realm, before Authur and Camelot, before The Hogwarts 4 and Merlin. Harry Potter is the only descendent left of Maleficent’s daughter, Aurora. She feels the exact moment James died and it is her magic that stopped the killing curse that night. Maleficent will save Harry from that cursed doorstep, and Harry will grow up in the Moores, as a fae prince. Beautiful and cruel as only a fae can be. With Grandmother Maleficent, Grandfather Diaval, and Uncle Jareth too. What will Hogwarts do with this little prince? Harmony or Lunar Harmony
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my english is bad like my drawings so i’m SORRY
maleficent: >:)
diaval: WTF mistress??????????
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Meet Grumio, a handsome and dashing creature who had caught the eye of Maleficent in her youth… until he ditched her her for another girl
And meet Lolita, a beautiful yet snobby young elven woman who stole Grumio away from Maleficent
What do you think?
2Favorite animated villains
9Curses don’t end. They’re broken.
MALEFICENT: MISTRESS OF EVIL
2019, dir. Joachim Rønning460
