Before You Read

Welcome to The Childhood We Never Thought to Miss.

If you’re joining the memoir for the first time, I invite you to begin with Part 1, where this journey through childhood in Poland begins. If you’ve just finished Part – The Kingdom Beyond the Staircase, this chapter continues as those familiar adventures lead to unexpected lessons. 

Now, let’s return to the park, where some of life’s quietest lessons were waiting to be discovered.

Our park wasn’t just a place where we played. Somehow, without any of us noticing, it quietly became another classroom, although nobody ever called it that. Every so often our kindergarten teachers would gather us together, button up the last few coats, count us more than once to make sure nobody had mysteriously disappeared, and lead us through the familiar streets towards the park. The excitement was completely different from the excitement of going there after school with friends. Then it was ours. Now it belonged to discovery.

I don’t remember a single lesson beginning with, “Today we are going to learn…” Instead, one of the teachers would simply kneel beside a tree, pick up a leaf and hold it against the sunlight filtering through the branches above us.

“Look closely.”

Children are wonderfully obedient when curiosity is involved.

We crowded around until little shoulders almost touched, staring at something we had probably walked past hundreds of times without ever really seeing it. Suddenly the leaf wasn’t just green anymore. Tiny veins spread through it like roads reaching every corner, each one carrying life that was invisible until someone showed us where to look. We traced them gently with our fingers, careful not to tear them, and listened as our teacher explained that leaves were the tree’s kitchen, quietly making food with sunshine, air and water. She never used complicated words that belonged in science books. She spoke our language, turning something extraordinary into something a child could actually understand.

From then on every walk became a treasure hunt. We searched beneath the chestnut trees for shiny brown chestnuts still hiding inside their prickly green shells, filled our little pockets with acorns, gathered unusual twigs, collected leaves in every imaginable shape and color, and proudly carried our treasures back to kindergarten as though we had returned from an expedition to some distant land. Nobody worried if our pockets became muddy or our tights ended up covered in grass stains. That simply meant we had been busy discovering the world.

Back in the classroom those ordinary little gifts from nature somehow became animals, people and imaginary creatures. Chestnuts grew tiny legs made from matchsticks, acorns became funny little hats, colorful leaves transformed into butterflies and forests, while crooked twigs that an adult would probably have stepped over without noticing suddenly became antlers, arms or magical wands, depending on where a child’s imagination decided to wander that day. Looking back now, I realize our teachers never tried to tell us what something should become. They simply placed our collections on the table and trusted imagination to do the rest. They understood something many adults forget—that children rarely need entertaining; they only need space.

Even the weather wasn’t treated as an enemy.

If it rained, we didn’t automatically stay indoors staring sadly through steamed-up windows. Unless there was thunder or strong winds, we simply put on our wellington boots, zipped up our raincoats and went outside anyway. To us, rain wasn’t bad weather. It was just different weather. Puddles became irresistible invitations, every splash somehow bigger than the last despite repeated reminders to “be careful,” and before long the bottoms of our waterproof trousers were decorated with muddy freckles that proudly announced exactly how much fun we had been having.

Those rainy walks slowed everything down. We noticed things sunshine often hid from us. Earthworms appeared on the paths as though they had decided to join our adventure, snails carried their tiny homes patiently across wet leaves, raindrops clung to blades of grass like little glass beads, and the smell… I can still remember that smell. Wet earth has a way of filling your lungs that no perfume has ever managed to imitate. Even now, after the first proper rainfall following a hot summer day, I am no longer standing wherever I happen to be. For a fleeting moment, I am that little girl again, wearing oversized wellington boots, watching a snail make what seemed like the longest journey in the world while wondering whether it ever grew tired of carrying its house everywhere it went.

We learned to recognise trees long before anyone expected us to remember their names. We knew that chestnut leaves looked different from maple leaves, that oak leaves looked nothing like birch leaves, and that every season quietly changed the park without ever asking anyone’s permission. Autumn painted everything gold, copper and deep red before scattering it across the paths beneath our feet. Spring arrived so gently that one day we suddenly realized the bare branches were green again. None of this felt like learning. We thought we were simply going for walks.

Years later, when I could still recognize many of those trees without opening a book, I realized those gentle afternoons had left me with something far more valuable than facts.

They had taught me to notice.

There was another lesson we absorbed just as naturally, although nobody ever stood at the front of the room to explain it. Respect simply lived among us. Every morning, when our teacher entered the classroom, we stood up almost without thinking. We greeted her together, not because we were afraid of what would happen if we forgot, but because that was simply what children did. In return she greeted every one of us with warmth, listened patiently to our endless stories that usually wandered far away from the original point, tied shoelaces, wiped away tears that seemed enormous at the time and somehow always found time to answer one more question, even when she had probably answered twenty already that morning. Respect was never demanded. It quietly travelled in both directions, and because of that, none of us questioned it.

To be continued…