childhood

Have you seen Richard Linklater's Boyhood yet? Filmed over 12 years it follows the life of a young boy, Mason, and his ever changing (blended) family. It is an epic in every sense but it also focuses closely on the mundane too. You watch these children (Mason and Samantha, his sister) grow in front of your eyes and you get the sense that childhood- that sweet, special, protected time is fleeting - Harry Potter and Gameboys give way to drugs and drinking but more importantly you understand that the boy shapes the man, that those experiences and impressions from their tender years form the adolescent and that adolescent becomes an adult. I felt quite sad coming out into the freezing night air and some of my girlfriends I was with said they were going home to hug their kids while they still could... Kevin often says to me 'subh milis ar an doras' which is a slight bastardisation of a line from an Irish poem which reminds us that all those messy, jammy fingerprints left by children will fade fast and one day everything will be clean but the little hands which made the mess will be gone. Worth remembering.