I got a haircut recently, and as the stylist snipped, she asked a question. Her ex-husband had protested when she wanted to put their girls on a plane, solo, to visit family a couple of hours away.

"Did you ever fly alone as a kid?"

Dear Reader, I laughed then — a hearty guffaw.

For, you see, the list of things I did alone as a child was long and included much more than flying.

I grew up before the advent of dawn-to-dusk supervision, so my brothers and I were sometimes pushed onto a plane to Greece to spend three months in the care of our grandparents, sans parents.

My younger brother remembers one trip where his connecting flight was delayed and he spent a night in New York, alone, which sounds like the plot of "Home Alone 2" but actually was just the life of a kid in the 1980s.

My grandfather picked us up at the Athens airport and drove us to their tiny village, and woe betide us if we'd forgotten our Greek in the preceding year. My grandfather spoke no English, though my grandmother eventually learned a few words after hearing my brother and I screech "Shut up!" and "Stop it!" at each other enough times.

In the village, we roamed free, traipsing off into the mountains or running to the coffee shop to play foosball with other feral children.

All the villagers knew whose kids we were, and they'd report back when necessary. I don't remember anyone ever being worried we might get hurt, but they sure did tattle on us.

My little brother and I happened upon a stream one year, and we instantly became a mini Army Corps of Engineers, tidying up and removing pebbles blocking its flow. We returned the next day and industriously re-shoveled the pebbles, which had mysteriously reappeared.

After the third day, a farmer appeared at my grandparents' house, yelling through the door to my grandmother.

"Your grandkids are flooding my garden!" he shouted, and that was the moment I learned about natural irrigation systems.

Another year, when I was 13 and my younger brother 10, my grandparents drove us a half-hour away to a beach shack and left us there, unsupervised for a week, with two similar-aged cousins.

There was no electricity or running water at the shack, which had two bedrooms, a small kitchen and an outhouse that we flushed with a bucket of seawater. We checked our shoes and clothes for scorpions, which wouldn't strike unless you touched them.

My grandfather stopped by once a day to cook us a meal — fried potatoes, feta cheese and salad, usually — and drop off fresh water for drinking and washing our hair.

During the day, we swam, fished with tri-tipped spears and wandered down to a lonely bay where waves crashed over giant rocks shaped like dominoes.

At night, we blew out the oil lamps and curled our sunburned bodies onto thin cots to sleep.

It was one of the best times of my childhood, when my mind and body were as free to soar as I liked.

After I'd recounted this, the hairstylist asked another question.

"Would you let your kids do that?"

I laughed again.

My husband and I would get arrested if we did (perhaps rightfully so), but kids in 2023 also haven't been prepared for such a thorough entrance into the world. They've always been surrounded by adults' eyes, and they're not ready to be so alone, so unseen.

We talked, then, about how freedom has risks but also its rewards.

We've made trade-offs for safety, but we wondered what children — and adults — have lost in the exchange.

Fewer of us fall into wells and out of trees. Fewer of us drown.

But, we admitted, fewer of us swim. Fewer of us climb.

Fewer of us soar.

To learn more about Georgia Garvey, visit GeorgiaGarvey.com.

Photo credit: Johnny Cohen at Unsplash