Hankering over past times.

Sane here Sparklefizz. Since then, during my teens and early twenties, I have had a phobia of smiling and showing my teeth, always covering my mouth with my hand. Wrecked my confidence. Nowadays the amazing advancement of dentistry!

I sympathise Jenn. I'm 73 and have never really smiled. Losing my teeth as a child ruined my life basically.

I miss the safety of being able to walk alone at night. There is no honour among thieves now anyone is a target for robbery mothers with young children, disabled people, elderly etc. These people being targeted in my childhood was extremely rare. Also miss doors being unlocked, popping into neighbours for a brief chat and cuppa, doctors coming to visit sick children and knowing the family, seeing people walking in the streets much more, kids playing outside instead of playdates etc. 50s and 60s childhood was the best. Neighbours kept an eye on all the children and would tell them off if they did something wrong. You would get attacked for doing that now. It's sad.

I don't thinkI hanker after anything but I wish I ddn't have these pains in my legs. Still, I am seeing the GP about it, have had a CT scan (what a miracle they are!) and am tryind different remedies so it's not major.

I can remember asking my mum (in her 90’s) when was her ‘best time’ she said when a child … I did question this & reminded her that the bombs were dropping on nearby Coventry, so many nights in the scullery under the stairs & rationing … she had forgotten!
Although I’ve had some wonderful ’decades’ and wish I’d made more of the time with the children growing up …. It’s about being grateful for everything I have today. Although not perfect I can still do most things and trying to prepare myself for a ‘positive’ old age that doesn’t put too much responsibility on the children. Any suggestions welcome!

In general, my motto is "Don't look back." Those days are gone, you can't change them or bring them back, and thinking about them often brings sadness. I do have an occasional wander through my memories, of course, but I try not to dwell on the past too much.

When we long for something like simpler Christmases or other childhood memories, I think we're just longing for the experience of being a child. It wasn't the bath cubes, the annuals, the tinsel, the crackers, "the big present" - in my case, always a doll, which was all I ever wanted - it was seeing everything through a child's eyes. However nice you make Christmas as an adult, you can never recapture the excitement, the anticipation and the joy that kids feel at such a time. I think that the same thing applies to all childhood memories. Emotions are so big when you are a child.

I miss that feeling and I miss the adults who were around me and made me feel safe. Mum and dad, my grandmother, the aunt and uncle who spent Christmas with us...Sadly, I've lost them all. But if I could go back to those days, I wouldn't be with my husband (who was a little boy growing up in Africa when I was a little girl growing up in Britain) and our kids and grandkids would not, of course, exist. I wouldn't want to give up my current family to get my old family back, much as I loved them.

If I let myself hanker for anything, it would be the Christmases before one of my daughters emigrated to the USA with her husband and kids. I miss them and Facetime isn't the same, particularly at Christmas. Then I remind myself that we're lucky to have our daughter who lives here, her partner and her three gorgeous girls. (Not to mention her ex-partner who also comes round at Christmas because he has no other family and we can't leave him on his own!} So I try not to think about what used to be, and concentrate on what is happening now.

I am not sure that walking home at night was ever really safe, but ignorance is bliss, when any woman attacked was unlikely to report it because of how she would be spoken of among 'friends' relatives and neighbours.

When I was on the town, 1960s, we were always told, if we were walking home at night, to stick to large well lit roads and roads with lots of houses and to avoid quiet unlit roads and paths and walking through parks or similar.

I was at university in Newcastle and a direct walk back to my Hall of Residence meant walking across the Town Moor, a very large open space. Despite the road through it being well lit and well used, I always took a more circuitious route through a suburb of '30s semis, so that I was always close to houses and people. I would do no different now.

If only we could turn the clocks back. Christmas dinner with loads of us sat round an extended table with different sized chairs and searching for sixpences in mum's home made Christmas pudding.
Wishing I'd been more forthcoming at school instead of being soft and bullied a bit. I never had any close friends and it's been the same all my life.
Since I got a computer I started my family tree and because my late sister got some info from my mum I have now traced family back a couple of hundred years. I've even found some distant cousins but I have a lot of questions and no one to answer them.

I can remember being desperate to grow up and leave home - I did escape at 17 - yet, looking back, there were many happy times. Happy days are so easy for a child, though, being healthy, full of energy and optimism.

All the happy memories with my father and siblings - but not my mother. Still, there was plenty of boredom, disappointment, anger and hopelessness too. I'm far more content now!

A lovely, poignant message Bluecat

I miss.. hand written letters plopping onto the mat, recognising handwriting, carefully chosen cards at birthday, Christmas, special times.

I do though, appreciate spontaneous texts, emails, my smart phone which enables this, with camera, torch, maps, calculator, many apps : to paraphrase Laurie Lee - we have exchanged effort for instant.

I love the sweet memories of the past but there are lots of things I like about being older. I wasn’t particularly happy as a child, either and I can also remember the sense of relief when I was big enough to leave and also to defend myself. It wasn’t all bad of course but I felt very helpless and things were very unpredictable.

Something about the past I miss was the sense of order and fitness of things. Older people were respected. Not because they were necessarily smarter but rather because of what they had contributed to the community throughout their lives. Professional people such as teachers, doctors and police officers were also respected as figures of authority. Now there is a massive sense of entitlement from people who have put little or nothing into the kitty. Even small chldren often have this sense of entitlement. You are entitled to nothing unless you earn it.

I’ve noticed how time has quickened up and each year just flashes by.

I often get brief glimpses of events in the past and I remember who I was with, the weather, what I was wearing and I want to repeat those times.

I’m fortunate that I have a good marriage and family and I want to continue spending time with them.

I’ve noticed how time has quickened up and each year just flashes by.
I know! It's only a fortnight since last Christmas .

It's all been said, really. I agree that a lot of hankering for the past is really wanting to recreate the feeling of having life ahead of you, and being innocent enough to believe with certainty that it would all be so much better. The long school holidays with an adventure always just round the corner, looking forward to Christmas, to being a teenager, then to leaving school and having your own money, then to having a place of your own and so on. If something didn't work out there was always the next thing, and time wasn't working against you so the stakes were so much lower.

I think that when you're living that it's just how things are, so you don't even recognise it. You remember the events and think that they are what made things good - whether that's playing outside or chestnuts at Christmas, but really it's youth that makes everything rosy. I'd love to be young now, particularly if I could do it with such wisdom as life has given me, but not to recreate my youth as it really was. Largely grey and boring, with low-level worry underpinning everything - of saying the wrong thing, letting people down, stepping out of line, one of the neighbours reporting you for doing something 'inappropriate', and the feeling of powerlessness in the here-and-now making the promise of a better future so much more alluring.

I'd love to have the experiences and opportunities that young people have now, but without the pressure to have the seemingly perfect lives they see on Instagram, and their low-level worry of having personal things made permanently public because everyone has a camera with them at all times.

Plus ca change and all that . . .

Gosg Sazzl where do you live ,apart fom the doctor doing home visits life is pretty much the same here as the things you miss.Kids play in the street ,sledge at the back of my house when the snow comes and build snowmen,My door is only locked at bedtime I had a neighbour in yesterday for coffee on the spur of the moment ..He needed a chat about a health issue.He left with a new CD of relaxing music
The nurse across the street was happy to visit when my MIL stayed with us and even went to the funeral when she died this time last year .
I'm not a looking back person ,except when my friend of 50 years and I get chatting about silly things we did when we worked together and we end up in tears of laughter .

I think ,I may well be wrong ,,but if just one of us hold on to the things like open door then others follow .Its like Halloween we always make up dozens of bags with nuts and an apple and sweeties and a 50p we get loads of wee ones singing their songs or telling us jokes and we love it.Its the same as we did and my parents and grandparents.
My lovely daughter makes up bags for kids with dietary issues and puts it on FB.She laughed when she phoned me to say that she had a boy who came to the door and asked for 2 normal 1 with no nuts and 1 with no sugar content for his littlest sister who weren't allowed to go out in the dark

The amount of tech now, including kids toys, amazes me and I miss the simple things at times. I was looking at kids toys while I was shopping the other day and they had a shelf of toys from my childhood. There was a yo-yo, a harmonica, dominoes, Tiddlywinks and the wee plastic soldier that had a parachute that you spent hours throwing out of your bedroom window. How times have changed, it would be lovely to think some kids might get those in their stockings and actually play with them.

I love fashion so the only thing I’d love to be younger for is to wear lovely clothing appropriate for younger women. Superficial I know! But I really don’t hanker after anything in the past. I’ve moved 3000 miles away from where I grew up and my friends in order to live with my DS and family and don’t miss anything - I just try to in the present moment.

I try to be in the present moment

I think we’re just longing for the experience of being a child

I think you have it in one Bluecat.

The anticipation, the excitement of Santa coming, what would he bring? The different food, the extra chocolate, the two weeks holiday from school, maybe it will snow?

But none of the work, none of the responsibilties.

It would be our parents, (but mostly our mothers) who would be doing it all, the extra shopping and cooking, making the pennies stretch, making up beds for anyone who came to stay, buying and wrapping presents in secret. I bet our mums felt stressed and harassed, the main difference being they hadn’t been subjected to the onslaught of advertising since the end of the summer holidays, as we are now.

No, the innocence of childhood was what made it special.