When I was a little girl, one of my favorite things to do was to ask my mom to tell me stories about my favorite main character, me.
I’d say, “Tell me a story about the day I was born,” or, “What was I like when I was even younger?”
I wanted to know any details of the stories she could remember or was willing to share.
Now that I have my own little girl, I find that I am the one being asked to share the stories.
On a whim, I thought it would be fun to tell her about my best friend, who also happens to be my cousin Kaycee.
She is a year older than me and lived one house away.
We got into all kinds of shenanigans.
I’m pretty sure the story I started with was a Kaycee and Kendall classic—standing on the sink of our grandma’s bathroom singing “I Believe I can Fly” and jumping off to some perfectly timed choreography.
That hooked her.
So now I frequently hear, “Mom, tell me a story about what you and Kaycee did when you were little.”
I think she likes to hear these stories because she can relate to the silly antics and imaginative play.
We were weird kids and made up plenty of games to fill our time together.
Also, I think she views these stories as crazy works of fiction because she has never been able or allowed to experience some of those things that I did.
The independence I had in the early 2000s was drastically different from what children experience today.
Times have changed. Parenting has changed. People have changed.
I am sure that at the ages of 8 and 9, my cousin and I took care of ourselves during the summer.
Our parents worked. Our older siblings were somewhere.
So, we would pack Walmart sacks with overnight clothes, tell no one our plans, and hop on our bikes to ride the eight blocks across town to my grandma’s house because we had decided we wanted to play over there and that we were going to spend the night.
With apprehensive approval, we were allowed to paint the walls and floor of our grandma’s attic.
We would use her oven and griddle to cook for ourselves.
We’d walk to the store together, alone, in hopes of having enough money for our favorite snacks.
We would ride from one end of town to the other on our bikes to go swimming.
We would wander around our county fair after being dropped off at the entrance.
We would rollerblade and scooter in parking lots because they were smoother.
We would go into Walmart with our parents or grandma, and, while they shopped, we stayed in the toy section, not caring when anyone would come to retrieve us.
We were only called over the loudspeaker once.
While telling these stories to my daughter is an absolute blast and brings back waves of nostalgia, something that I have thought about a lot is that my cousin and I experienced these adventures together.
But alone.
Unless we played at each other’s houses, we had minimal adult supervision, and we were little.
The balance of safety, freedom and fun was just different then.
Those times felt lighter. The world felt less threatening—safer for kids to be kids.
My daughter knows that I would not let her ride across town on her bicycle at 8 years old, but I want to make sure she does get to experience moments of independence and fun.
It is my job to keep her safe, while also making it possible for her to create her own memories that she can someday share when someone asks her to tell a story about when she was young.