Childhood
Well, I may be going out on a limb here, but could there be in this poem something more at stake and deeper than nostalgia for childhood? It seems to me that the speaker chafes not only at the zipper on the dress but at the dress itself and its imposition of gender assignment. She prefers her brother's clothes to her own, and when she leaps the fence it is as "both girl and boy." The snake may be an innocuous species, but it is still a snake, with biblical connotations of "sin" and temptation to a world outside bucolic Eden. I sense a hint of danger—and of attraction to danger—there.
In this reading, the volta is in line 9: “I jump, both boy and girl, the chain link fence.” There are two turns here; one from girl into mixed gender and one from a place of confinement to a place of freedom. I understood the watch as a metaphor for the mother's "watch" or oversight and the constraints of the speaker's childhood. In this reading, Childhood is not so much an ideal state the speaker views with nostalgia but a place of confinement which she wants to grow past.
What makes me question my reading is the title—“childhood”—and "list / of errands on a notepad," a phrase that suggests that what chafes the speaker most is impending adulthood and its restrictions: responsibilities, having to be on time for dinner, or for anything.
As a nitpick, I'd suggest cutting the word “had” in line 8.
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