Shilo, When I Was Young

This journal didn't begin with a childhood memory. It began while I was writing The School of Magnificent Misfits.

One of the children in the series, Leese, has an invisible friend named Mr Spizzlackie. Somewhere during the writing I found myself wondering why invisible friends appear so often in childhood stories, and more importantly, why they appear so often in childhood itself.

That simple question sent me searching.

Somewhere along the way I was reminded of an old song called Shilo, a song many people have understood as being about a lonely boy and his imaginary companion.

I remembered the opening lines and, almost instantly, I was a boy again.

Young child with dreams. Dream every dream on your own.

What an extraordinary way to begin a song.

There was something about Neil Diamond's gravelly voice that always felt safe to me. Not like a performer, but like a grandfather quietly giving children permission to disappear into their own imagination for a while.

The song certainly paints Shilo as a lonely child. I suppose I'd always assumed that was true of children with invisible friends generally. If a child invents someone to play with, surely they're missing someone real.

That certainly seemed logical to me.

Except...

The more I read, the less certain I became.

In fact, many of the studies seemed to suggest almost the opposite. Children with invisible companions often appeared to be highly imaginative, socially capable and surprisingly good at understanding what other people might be thinking or feeling.

Which immediately left me with another question.

If invisible friends aren't simply filling an empty space, then what are they doing?

Could they be helping children develop social skills in a place that feels completely safe? A relationship where there is no fear of rejection, embarrassment or getting it wrong?

Are children, without even realising it, role-playing their own lives? Trying different responses, experimenting with kindness, conflict, courage and empathy long before the real world demands those things of them?

Or perhaps they're simply exploring relationships in the only way children know how.

Or is something else happening entirely?

The more I read, the more it seemed that psychologists weren't especially interested in whether invisible friends were real. They were interested in what they did.

They seemed to appear at an age when children are learning almost everything that matters about being human. How to share. How to argue. How to apologise. How to comfort someone. How to understand that another person might see the same situation completely differently.

It made me wonder whether invisible companions are less about escaping the world and more about preparing for it.

Which brought me back to Leese.

Long before I started reading about invisible friends, I'd been quietly playing with an idea for a future Magnificent Misfits story. Darby would be in Grade 6 by then, while Leese would be taking her first nervous steps into Prep.

Somewhere in that story I knew Mr Spizzlackie would have to leave.

Not because anyone forced him to. Not because Leese had been told to grow up. But because something would have changed.

That was the question that had started all of this.

Why do children eventually let go of their invisible friends?

Or perhaps an even better question...

What is it that they no longer need?

These questions had me searching my own childhood, a place I don't naturally enjoy spending much time.

I was looking for some point of reference. Some memory that might help me understand what I was reading, and what I was ultimately going to write about. I was researching Leese and what she may need to go through.

Instead, I found myself confronted by a far more personal question. At some point, without really noticing, I had stopped researching Leese. I was quietly researching the little boy I used to be.

Who or what was my Shilo?

Looking back on my childhood has never been something I naturally enjoy.

That's not to say there weren't happy memories. There were. There were adventures, laughter and moments of genuine joy, just as there are in almost every childhood.

But memory is a curious thing. It doesn't always greet us with balance.

When I find myself looking backwards, it is usually the more difficult memories that arrive first. The ones that demanded something of me before I was old enough to understand what that something was. They seem to stand nearest the door, while the happier memories wait more patiently somewhere further inside.

Perhaps that's true for many of us.

Whatever the reason, searching my childhood for an invisible companion wasn't simply an exercise in remembering. It meant walking back into a place I don't often choose to visit.

The strange thing was that the more I reflected, the less interested I became in whether I had an invisible friend at all.

Instead, another question quietly took its place.

If children sometimes create companions to help them navigate the world around them, then what helped the little boy I used to be navigate his?

The question felt strangely unsettling. Not because I couldn't remember having an invisible friend. Because I couldn't remember whether I'd ever needed one.

And if I had...

What did it say about me that I couldn't remember them? The thought carried an unexpected sense of guilt.

If there really had been something, or someone, that had helped a little boy make sense of a world that sometimes felt confusing or overwhelming, what did it mean that I'd left them so completely behind? Had growing up required me to forget? Or had I simply become so busy being an adult that I'd stopped looking back long enough to notice?

It's a strange feeling. To feel a sense of loss for someone who may never have existed.

Or perhaps it isn't loss at all.

Perhaps it's shame.

Shame at the possibility that, if there really had been something, or someone, who helped a little boy make his way through those early years, I had allowed them to fade so completely from memory that I couldn't even remember to thank them.

If they existed at all. If something helped that little boy survive, how have I reached adulthood without ever stopping to wonder what it was?

So what began as an attempt to understand how I might one day write about a six-year-old girl saying goodbye to her imaginary horse, her best friend, her Mr Spizzlackie, had quietly become something else entirely.

Without realising it, I had wandered away from Leese's story and back into my own.

I was no longer trying to understand why children eventually let go of their invisible friends.

I was trying to understand what, or perhaps who, had helped a little boy build the inner resources to navigate the life that was unfolding before him.

And whether, somewhere along the way, I'd forgotten to thank them, and perhaps that's where this journey really begins.