dreamland.

remember when you were a kid and you were allowed to believe in most everything?

before that mean kid in your 2nd grade class told you santa wasn't real,

or you started learning about 'forklore'.

i remember sitting in clover patches for hours on end,

determined to find one with 4 leaves so i could meet a leprechaun

and travel with him to his rainbow and pot of gold.

my mom used to let me take 'the good tupperware' out into the backyard,

where i would mix up mud pies and cauldrons full of potions & stews for hours.

{really believing it could be magic}.

i remember thinking that any day now, animals would start talking to me when no one was looking,

or i was going to fall into my own rabbit hole...

my parents fostered my wild imagination & never told me i was being 'too silly'.

i remember wanting to be the first woman everything (very ambitious little ta).

one summer i was determined that if i went to space camp,

NASA would see how invaluable i was, and let me go on the next mission with them.

my mom looked up every possible space camp within 12 states.

well, i was too young, or too little, so she let me turn our living room into 'space camp' for 3 weeks!

she got me huge boxes & markers & old helmets & tin foil & saran wrap

(& anything else a real astronaut may need).

she even bought me freeze dried snacks from an army supply store.

(they were disgusting, but i ate them enthusiastically - because i had to, if i was going to prove myself as a great astronaut).

as an adult, i realized that not every child got to have these wild adventures whenever they wanted.

some kids never got to wear their 'dress up' shoes to school,

or make boats out of old newspapers to sail in ponds...

now, it's not like we ran a muck all over the house and the neighborhood,

we were not unruly children.

we learned how to fold fancy napkins,

and pull weeds, and go to bed when it was bedtime.

we were just allowed to play hard.

i've been told that i've always been an old soul,

so i am so grateful that i was never told i needed to 'grow up' when i was a kid.

a part of me has always been a grown-up.

this type of childhood freedom has allowed me to carry

wonder and wild imagination into adulthood.

{how liberating!}

this does not make me irresponsible.

rather, it allows me to keep dreaming,

and keep playing,

no matter how old i am.

here's what i wish my backyard looked like these days:




what a divine dream! could you imagine?

 



at night we could take this staircase, having tea along the way...

 



and sleep here. reading, and laughing, and playing.

 

meet you there.