The day was so wonderful that I wished one could live slowly, just like slow music plays. A warm, Saturday afternoon at the end of May, almost fifty years ago, I was sitting with my two sisters, Cordelia and Mary, my twin, as well as our cousin Rosemond, in the living room of our house in Loughton, a suburb of South London. It was hot as if it were the height of summer, and the honey-colored sunbeams fell to the floor, while the air above them shimmered with dust particles; and bees buzzed around a purple viburnum branch in a vase on the fireplace shelf. All four of us felt a relaxed feeling taking over us, which we enjoyed for the first and last time, because at the end of the term we would finish school and had passed all the exams that would allow us to enter the world of adults. We were happy like prisoners who had escaped, because we all hated being children.

At that time, there was already, and it became more intense each year thereafter, the pretext that children are not the same kind as adults and possess different perception and intelligence, which help them to live separate and fulfilling lives. Then and now, this seemed to me terrible nonsense. A child is an adult who temporarily endures circumstances that exclude the possibility of happiness. When someone is very young, they struggle under such physical and mental disadvantages, as if they have suffered a terrible accident or illness; yet, while the crippled and paralyzed become objects of pity, since they cannot walk and must be carried, and cannot express their needs or think clearly, no one pities babies, although they constantly show confusion and wounded pride through crying.