My childhood behind the big old trees in the old forest _ Ladies of Hive contest #35

Hello my friends

How's your MonDay? I hope you are doing really well today 😎😎😎

This is my entry for Ladies of Hive Community Contest #35 with topic below:

1️⃣ What’s your favourite childhood memory/memories?

As we grow up surely each one of us has a childhood memory that stays with us and often you can find yourself reminiscing over. There are happy memories and there are sad memories, but they often tend to be defining moments in our lives that set us apart from the rest.

I was fortunate to have had a wonderful childhood and have many beautiful and memorable moments with my friends that lived in the same neighborhood and every time I think back to those points in my life I feel strangely happy and peaceful. Sometimes all it takes is walking past something and noticing wow I was in this spot 20 years ago doing some crazy things with my friends. It really does hit home that time does fly by.
Today I want to tell you about a particular childhood memory where I used to go and play behind the big old trees in the forest.

The beautiful sunset gradually fades behind the small forest in my hometown ❤️

My village where I was born and raised is not far from a small forest. It was a place where the children who grew up in my time had somewhere to go and play have fun. We used to play games as hide and seek or sometimes build a little tree house where no one could catch us. The forest was surrounded by a small stream flowing through and a large empty cemetery nearby. Although we were playing near a cemetery we never felt afraid but often naively we were naughty enough to climb around the graves and play (in my defense we were young and did not know any better). When we were growing up our family was very poor we did not have certain things that children are so fortunate to have these days like television or mobile phone etc.

Internet was so scarce I didn’t know anyone in my neighborhood that had it so when we finally had it, felt like a whole new world opened up to us. Power outages were very common here so with that being said you can understand why we just wanted to go play outside everyday and thinking about it now as I am writing it I am so glad we didn’t have these things because there is a world out there and when your young imagination is our greatest tool we don’t need electronic devices to decide things for us or show us the way.

We would often hide from our parents to go into the forest and play. A lot of the times we would go and pick fruit to eat (luckily we knew which ones were poisonous). I remember jumping from trees at what I thought was a decent height not such much when I go there now but we used to jump form the branches and into the stream to cool down. There were sounds in the forest sometimes we would see baby monkeys or hear frogs echoing it was a pretty cool place to be.

These pictures I attached here just random forest I went to. It's not my childhood forest. I think, because my childhood was attached to the forest, it formed my current personality: love nature, love forest, love animals

I remember one afternoon just me and a girl friend of mine who usually come to the forest with me. We skipped a class at school to come and play there, because we were having such a good time we didn’t even notice when it got dark (around 6.30pm) the chirping from the birds got louder and louder, making my friend and I a bit scared.

We didn’t know what to do as when it got darker it became harder to see so we continued to sit on the little tree house we built and wait until we figured out what our plan was. My friend started crying loudly due to being scared I felt so bad for her so as I was about to jump down the tree and figure out how to get home I heard a familiar voice yell out it was my fathers.
My Father hadn’t seen me come home from school so he went and asked my friends if I had been to school that day, they let him know that my friend and I decided to run away and go play in the forest. As my father taking me out of the forest to go back home he went into the garden to break a long bamboo stick and hit me hard on the butt. He is a gentle father and I understand now I have done some silly things so he just worried a lot for my safety. He never hit me before but today was the day I learnt a lesson it was a painful and memorable one at that. What made me sad is that I had discovered his hand was bleeding, perhaps he had got it from climbing the tree to get me and my friend down. To this day I still feel very fortunate that my father found me that night, when a 13 year old girl felt her most fearful time for the first time.

Since then, I have made him a promise that I would study hard and not go back to doing the naughty things I was doing which was obviously going back to that forest at least without letting him know first. Every time it is mentioned these days my friends and I just laugh about it but deep down know we were being naughty.

With our childhood, there are good memories and there are sad memories. I hope you like myself choose to keep the most beautiful things in our memories so that when a layer of dust covers our mind that we will never forget the things we did.

We call it “Childhood” ❤️❤️❤️

Thank you for reading I hope you have a good day.
Dont forget to tell me Tell me: What’s your favourite childhood memory/memories?

Much love from LanBear !