I guess in some ways I had a very lucky childhood. Although I wasn't always happy, I had a lot of opportunities to do things most people never get to do. My mother was a homemaker, and my father was a petroleum engineer. I was born in Wyoming, but when I was one, right after my brother was born, we moved to Saudi Arabia where we lived for six years. During this time my family traveled a lot, so by the time I was seven, I had been around the world three times. Of course, I don't remember a good part of this, but the memories I do have contain a touch of the exotic, like seeing lions in Africa, skiing in New Zealand, or snorkeling in Tahiti. One of my favorite memories though comes from our family trip to Thailand.
I guess I was three or four at the time. This was the 1970's, and the tourist path in this part of the world was not so well worn, especially for people traveling with young children. So there we were, my folks, my brother, my older sister, and I in the heart of South East Asia, and we stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb. Really. It wasn't so much that we were western tourists, although that was part of it. What really mattered is that we were a family with young children who had very blond hair. Now I've always been blond, my siblings are blond, and all of my cousins are blond, but my hair was probably closer to snow white at this age, and to many people in Thailand it was something they had never seen before.
It's no exaggeration to say that to some of them I was like a miracle. Everywhere we went, I realized, people were staring at me. But it wasn't only that, the braver ones wanted to touch me, and this really got to be too much. I remember walking around a marketplace and there was an entire family following my family, all of them reaching out to stroke my hair. I was in tears. My father had to carry me and politely try and tell the people to go away.
But I must have gotten used to it, or not everybody bothered me, because the experience I remember most involved this same extraordinary level of attention from a Buddhist monk in Bangkok. We were visiting a temple there, and this one monk in his gold and red robes became infatuated with me. He picked me up in his arms and carried me all through the temple; I don't remember being upset by this at all. He was so gentle and so happy to be holding me. In the end, he blessed me and gave me a charm, a gold leaf tied to a red string. I had that leaf for many years, but sadly I lost it.
In 1999 I went back to Bangkok. It was full of western travelers then, and no one seemed to notice my blond hair too much. At one of the many temples there I stopped on a staircase with a flashback of this memory. Was this the place where that monk carried me around so long ago? I couldn't be sure, and my parents couldn't confirm it either, but the premonition was strangely powerful.
I don't think we should ever forget how we have been blessed in this world. Every one's life is unique, and we all have received treasures from those who carried us in the past. Just don't forget to pass those treasures on.
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