Boyhood

Fifty years ago when I was ten, the world was a very different place.  Many people long for the time when they were young.  They see it as a better, more innocent time.  Not me.  Childhood was both a blessing and a nightmare for me.  I was creative and artistic and full of life.  And my family encouraged that.  But I was also a victim of a sexual assault and believed I had to keep a terrible secret even from my parents so that the world would not reject me as something horrible.  We were on the way to the moon and the future looked bright.  But President Kennedy had been assassinated in 1963, and Apollo 1 would end in a fiery tragedy in 1967.  I look back with longing at many, many things, but I would never want to go back to that time and place without knowing everything…