I was such a moody child. That\u2019s what my parents said.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s such a moody child.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy are you such a moody child?\u201d<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t remember ever being called a happy-go-lucky or sunny-natured child, or feeling like one, although I certainly experienced varieties of happiness sometimes. I have a clear memory of somersaulting out of bed one morning when I was six or seven for the pleasure of getting up and going to school. Yet I\u2019m suspicious of that moment as having more to do with me trying to manipulate the family mood than a genuine expression of\u00a0joie de vivre<\/em>. It looks, in retrospect, too theatrical. It\u2019s the only really energetic recollection I have of myself, but I\u2019m sure there were others.<\/p>\n My most pervasive memory of young childhood, however, is of being in \u2018a mood\u2019, which really consisted of just the one mood in several shades of monochrome: a spectrum that ranged from a comforting solitary dreaminess inside a softly enclosing gentle shadow at one end to, at the far side of the continuum, the grimmest darkness in a hard-frozen, fractured icescape. Always it was me on the inside,\u00a0them<\/em>\u00a0out there, beyond my enclosure, unable to reach in. And me, sometimes not wanting, sometimes not able, to reach out.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s having one of her moods,\u201d my mother would say about me when my father returned from work. The words could be declined to suit the situation: I had moods; I was in a mood; I was a moody child. Being \u2018a moody child\u2019 described a permanent condition, while being \u2018in a mood\u2019 usually referred to the bleakest moods, which could last for hours, actually days sometimes. I don\u2019t think either sort only happened as a result of being in trouble (which happened easily and often), when my first response was usually anger and a sense of overwhelming unfairness, a welling-up of outrage \u2013 probably a common experience of all children \u2013 that only later might evolve into a mood and withdrawal.<\/p>\nReference:<\/h4>\n
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