Remember What It Was Like To Be Curious?

“Remember what it was like to be curious?”

I saw that question on a poster in Virginia’s Roanoke Airport this weekend.  The poster was for Carilion Clinic, a local healthcare organization.  The poster was trying to make the case that curiosity is a major healthcare value.  

Whether or not curiosity is important to maintaining my healthcare wasn’t what struck me about that poster.  

What struck me hardest was the question whether or not I remembered being curious as a kid, and even more importantly, what I was curious about.  

The answers to both questions weren’t hard to find.

I do remember being curious.  I would have been surprised not to be curious.  Some of my oldest memories are from when I was approaching my third birthday in 1951, and we were coming to America.  Interestingly, the memories are all about my curiosity, the questions I was asking my parents during that time.  

The oldest memory I have, in fact, is of something that happened before we left the Displaced Persons Camp in Vienenburg, Germany.  My mother had just sewn together a pair of shorts for me that she had made from a camouflage-colored parachute a British soldier had given her.  She dressed me in those camo shorts, gave me a rubber ball, and sent me outside to play.  However, there was no one outside to play with, and I ended up standing there by myself.  I remember thinking how odd it all felt and wondering where everyone was.  Why wasn’t my sister Donna there playing with me?  Why wasn’t my mother or my dad with me keeping an eye on me so I wouldn’t do something silly?  In my curiosity, the whole world felt like it had deserted me and gone off to play somewhere far away.  I was not a happy toddler.  In fact, I felt like I was about to start crying. 

After a few minutes, I found out why I was alone.  My dad suddenly appeared from behind a tree.  He had a camera in his hands, and he was desperate for some reason to get a photograph of me in my parachute shorts with no one around.

The second moment of curiosity I remember is also connected to a gift we received from a soldier.  When we were coming to America on the troop ship, we weren’t allowed to bring too many things.  In fact, I was only allowed to bring one toy.  It was a black doll given to me by an African-American soldier.  I loved that doll, and I remember asking my mother a question about it.  I asked her if there would be black children in America that I could play with.  I remember my mother nodding and saying, “Of course, there are all kinds of people in America.”

The third memory I have of my childhood curiosity is of the day in June 1951 when we finally arrived in America.  I remember standing on the dock with my mother and my sister by the wooden trunk my father had made and suddenly realizing my father wasn’t with us.  I turned to my sister and asked her where our father was.  She said she didn’t know.  Then, I asked my mother, and she also didn’t know.  None of us knew where my father was.  My sister said, “Maybe he got back on the ship because he wants to go back to Germany.”  My mother looked at her and just shook her head.  

Then suddenly my father appeared.  He was smiling and put his arms around all of us, and I asked him where he had been, and he smiled even more and said, “This is America.  I’ve been to America.”