When I was a kid, I was always going places. I collected firewood, whittled ambitiously large branches and ground up the damp green core inside acorn shells to ‘eat’ in my ‘log cabin’ in the backyard. I scrambled over the neighbor’s stone wall with an invisible St. Bernard to rescue friends pretending to be stranded. At low-tide on Long Beach Island, I collected sea water and shells and crossed rivulets in the sand with my bucket to return to my coastal village beneath our beach umbrellas. I was a Victorian nursemaid to my doll, taking letters to her grandmother and dressing her for tea. My bed became a covered wagon and I lulled myself to sleep each night by imagining that the nightlight was the sun setting on a prairie horizon. I didn’t have imaginary friends; I became imaginary characters and traveled back in time.
The roles I chose were never lavish, but I was rarely practical. Chelsea moved in to my log house during one playdate and suggested we bring in some “homey things”. She went for pots and pans and I collected my favorite books and a few keepsakes. The whittling was a priority in my backyard village the way leaping across streamlets with appropriate grace was most important in my coastal one. My covered wagon may have been without food and it never seemed to get any closer to its destination, but the historical accuracy of the blue and yellow quilt that I wrapped around myself more than compensated. These details gave sensation and emotion to my daydreams, the most trivial elements brought them to life.
