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RE: Donald: A Short Story
I was perhaps 8 or 9. Really don't know. My brother was strong. He took control, pretty much, because my father was out of the house, and, as you know my oldest brother had become very ill.
I tried to keep the story light. Hard to do with a dead dog. But this was real. It wasn't an imagined grotesque. These things happen.
Of course, Donald was a fiction. I used him to give an objective view of the events. Also, to keep an emotional distance, which is good for an author. In truth, we never met anyone in the forest, ever. Would have been really frightening if we had.
It was a challenging childhood, but good material for stories, I think :)
Yeah, it's true what you say. My siblings also have some very strange stories to tell from their childhood. Much of it sounds rather bizarre to the uninvolved, but in reality it was more normal to have lived in a challenging childhood. My imagination went wild when I thought of the dead dog.
Oh, a very intelligent explanation you give about Donald and take him as an objective element to distance yourself from the narrative.
P.S. why is it important to you not to have met someone? You mentioned it twice.
We were alone, my mother and the children. Behind us was a forest and a mountain. There were no "hikers" as you might find today. It was pretty wild. What would a stranger be doing on "our" mountain? We, as children, would have felt defenseless, though we always did have a dog with us.
It was, as you describe your siblings' experience, a little bizarre, hard to imagine I guess if you don't grow up in such an isolated way.
I'm grateful for all those days in nature, but it was a challenging environment. And not really conducive to developing social skills :)
ah! Yes! I can relate to that. My siblings grew up similarly. We lived away from civilization. Though I think your environment must have been even more remote. Interesting. When I was around to or three years old I was hiding under my moms skirt when a stranger appeared. My family was laughing telling me this story when we were older. They made of me a little jungle kid which started to be scared whenever something unusual happened.
HaHa!!! I have no memory of that, of course.
Certainly your childhood has shaped you and gave you a lot of subconscious memories. Having had nature close is for sure a good thing. I am convinced. ;))
Hiding under your mother's skirt :))
When you live remotely, everyone who isn't family, is a stranger, and suspect.
That story reminds me of a Gunter Grass book, The Tin Drum (Don't know German title). If I remember correctly, the story begins with a child hiding under his mother's skirts. I never could figure out what that story was about, but it won a lot of prizes.
"Die Blechtrommel"!
I saw the movie when I was still a kid myself - it's well known here. It's one of the strangest films I ever watched. Yes, there was a skirt scene.
Gives me the creeps ... I cannot remember what the narrative was about... only the overall atmosphere.
I am impressed you know that movie.
Good night from here. Time to sleep.