Remembering childhood is not childish

"Remembering childhood is not childish"
Darrel Hammon


I love this quote from Ken Macrorie. I have had it for years. It goes along with the essay "Using Snippets of Life to Coax Out the Lasting Memories," which I wrote a week or two ago on this blog. If this quote resonates with you, then write some of those childhood memories.

“Remembering childhood is not childish, but wise and sweet and necessary. We go back because we loved those years of play. We go back because remembering moves us closer to the children around us today. We go back because in writing through these years we gain a second life. The best writers take this journey....These [writers] wrote of childhood at the height of their mature powers. If you are under twenty, you need even more than they to write of childhood. A writer requires some distance between him and the events he recalls—not always, but usually. Then he is unfamiliar enough with them to feel the need to relate them fully for his readers and not for himself. If he writes of yesterday’s or last year’s events, he usually remembers them so well he leaves them shrouded in his nearby intimate memory, which the reader does not share.”

Macrorie, K. (1976). Telling Writing, rev. 2nd Ed. Rochelle Park: Hayden Book Company,Inc., pp.106-107.