Witness Hana Andronikova - how I found the child within me
Hana Andronikova is one of the best known younger Czech writers and has won considerable acclaim for her epic novel with the poetic title, "The Sound of the Sundial". It tells the story of a Czech family through the traumatic years of the mid-20th century. But here Hana recalls a very ordinary, everyday experience from her own life. It was nothing more than a short walk, but during that walk something occurred that carried a far deeper significance. Hana Andronikova found the child within her.
Hana Andronikova
"It was on a sunny day in May, when I took a walk, taking my reading -
Carl Gustav Jung's book about the "inner child" - with me - God
knows why. I strolled around places I know, and all of a sudden I was at a
playground - there were some benches and I realized that I'd never been to
that place before. I say down on the bench and started to read my book
about the inner child. I tried to imagine how the inner child - my own
inner child - would look, and I couldn't come up with any image. And all
of a sudden I saw him. There was a figure, a tiny little figure,
approaching and walking clumsily. I couldn't see his feet, but there was
obviously something wrong with them. It was a little boy. As he came
closer I could see his black eyes and he must have been Chinese or
Vietnamese. He was wearing white pyjamas, and then I could also see his
feet in big boots, very heavy boots, ten sizes too large for his small
feet. So he could hardly walk. But he was aiming at the playground,
smiling, all the time looking at me, and then I just looked around hoping
to see his mother somewhere around. But there was no-one there. And so I
approached him and I asked him where his mother was. He said nothing, just
kept on smiling, and then I asked him where he was from - where do you
live? - and he just stretched his hand towards me and opened his fist, and
there on the palm of his hand was a little key. So I stared at him and at
the key and I found it very surreal, and I felt - what am I going to do? I
cannot leave him alone here. At that moment I saw another figure - his
father - approaching, and the boy just went towards him, and the father
picked him up in his arms and went away with the boy. The boy still smiled
at me, and I just realized that I saw my inner child, and the most
precious thing was that the boy had a key."






