Back when I was young

In secondary school there were many places I could not have gone, many things I could not have done, that I was banned outright from partaking in. I knew that anywhere I wanted to go certain questions would be asked — and had to be satisfactorily answered — and even then I might still get a no.

Who was I going with, how were we getting there, would alcohol be consumed there, whose mother was chaperoning, what time did I expect to be back, all of these made a Sisyphean task out of asking to go out, and at the end of it most times I would be presented with the stumbling block, "Go and ask your father." Which, technically speaking, meant no.

I used to chafe at this bit she had placed on me. When one is young one feels no sense of vulnerability. Danger has a seductive charm that too often has the effect of drawing one towards the activity one should really be avoiding. I couldn’t see the monsters she saw lurking at every street corner and public place. And every time I protested she greeted me with that slogan of motherhood, "When you have your own children you will see what I’m talking about."

Well I’m not a mother but now I wonder, how did she ever manage to let us out of her sight? Now it is my turn to feel anxious when my younger brother or sister take too long to come home, even when my mother is nonchalant about their tardiness. It is I who chastise my sister for travelling home late at night and she quickly points out my hypocrisy.

I wonder, what will happen when I carry a child in my womb and every instinct in me becomes honed towards protecting my offspring?

I pass children on the roads after school, in the malls on weekends, stand behind them in fast food restaurant lines. I don’t feel old; many days I feel like I’m still a teenager, young and clueless and with no idea as to what I’m supposed to be doing or how to go about it if I did. But I feel far removed from these children. I wonder how they make their way.

I’m an adult now — have been for quite a while — and there are many places I’ve banned myself from going, many things I don’t allow myself to do.

Things that were everyday and commonplace in my youth have become taboo — liming on the block, travelling to and from the cinema, house parties. I go to clubs and see girls too young to consume alcohol with screwdrivers and Smirnoff Ice in hand, in skirts too short to facilitate tying shoelaces with their modesty intact. They lime with boys — men — that look like convicted felons, men who know well the delicious opportunity a short skirt and alcohol present.

I read stories everyday of children who have failed to outlive their parents. Children who have been kidnapped and murdered, run down, gunned down, bounced down, leaving their parents with a terrible, deeply ironic certainty. Finally, they know where their children are, finally, they are safe, nothing can ever happen to them again. In less than the space of a generation things have changed so very drastically. I’m not being na?ve or nostalgic, I’m no Nappy Myers longing for the return of long ago.

There was danger then too. But things did not seem as very wrong as they do now.

I wonder what will happen when I have to send my children off to school, when my children ask to go to a party, a lime at a friend’s house, a sleepover. I didn’t sleep over at a friend’s house until I was in my twenties; the horror of child abuse haunted my parents until we were all adults. I think maybe I would allow it for my kids, until the specter of Akiel Chambers looms in my head reminding me of what happened to him and he was not even at a sleepover, he was somewhere considered safe.

Youth has become so precarious in the space of less than a generation. Gangs in schools, access to guns, kidnappers, there are so many monsters now how could one ever hope to fend off all?

How can one possibly meet the challenge of this Herculean task called parenting, knowing that many of the problems we face are the aftereffects of parents who failed previously? And somewhere in the background I can almost hear my mother saying, "I told you so."

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