Welcome to a place where pine cones are medicine, a stick can be a baby bottle, a lily-of-the-valley is a fairy lamp with lots of little tiny lights.
I get to see my 8-year-old neighbor Lola each week for a couple of hours. She always has an idea for what we should do, and although we’ve done a couple of artsy projects (yes, she’s made a placemat from old greeting cards), the most fun has been pretend. And the best place for pretend seems to be out of doors.
I had almost forgotten about pretend. I did plenty of it both as a child, and when my child was young in the 80s. But that was long ago, so clearly I was a bit rusty. I found it’s a bit like riding a bike – you never really forget how. One person says something like “This stone can be the fairies’ doorstep”, and suddenly you find yourself saying “I know some seashells that can be more steps – I’ll go get them!”
When one of those last snowstorms surprised us, Lola and I converted the woodpile-snowdrift into a Fairytown, where the overturned shells became stepping stones, and later (not overturned) for fairy dishes. A hollow log was a safe haven for squirrels and chipmunks and other critters. Once it got warmer, Husband helped us build a Fairy House from some scrap wood pieces and an old squirrel feeder.
Our favorite game to date has been Ambulance. Lola created a doll hospital in a pine tree’s low branches, with hammock style beds she fashioned from tablecloths. She had brought three dolls with her that day, and the wheel barrow was enlisted as The Ambulance.
With the use of both my cordless and cell phones, I was able to call Lola the Ambulance Driver and tell her what street to zip over to (streets were named by what they were near: Garden Lane, Brick Lane, Shovel Lane…). She whisked an injured baby to The Hospital, where there were five available rooms named by the type of injury they housed: Broken Left Leg, Broken Right Leg, Broken Left Arm, Broken Right Arm, and Anything Else!
There was even a waiting room for me, the anxious mother – the garden bench out front over by Brick Lane. All babies/toddlers were successfully treated and given pinecone medicines, and returned by the Ambulance to their homes.
Do you have anyone in your current life with whom you can pretend?
If not, try it here: What would be the prominent features of your imaginary town?
My dad didn’t go to law school until I was born so didn’t settle into his career until a little later in my life. One of the results of this was that we moved around a lot when I was a kid. This meant I was ALWAYS the new kid on the block and I struggled to find friends and fit in.
When I was five, we lived on West Cedar in Webster Groves, Missouri for about a year. It was a great old house on a tree-lined street and as a family, we went through quite a bit in that house. My younger sister had her open-heart surgery when we lived there. My mother survived scarlet fever in this house and I learned to ride a bike on the street in front.
But my favorite memory of living on that block was being befriended by the little boy who lived across the street. His parents had welcomed us to the neighborhood early on; his name was Bobby and he was a year older than I was. There weren’t any other kids on our block that summer (except my sister who was too sick to play outside with us) and this was back in the day when you made do in your neighborhood. You just didn’t get driven around by your parents for play dates back then.
Bobby had a huge collection (or so it seemed to me at the time) of matchbox cars, all different shapes and colors, that he kept in a big shoe box. He knew all the names of the different makes of cars and could tell you when he got each one. He could play with those cars for hours and he invited me to join in his adventures. He did have a little track for the cars in the house but the hands-down best place to play was around the base of the big tree in front of his house. You know the kind of tree I mean – one of those trees with the root systems jutting out of the ground and winding all around. It was the perfect setting for all our matchbox action. We drove the cars all around, up and down the various roots and even placed popsicle sticks across some of the roots to make carports and caves. We had quite a few different scenarios to play out, but it seems that many of our games were spy games, with one spy chasing another all around the tree, in and out of our little caves. It never seemed to bother Bobby that I was a girl and I don’t remember our folks worrying about how much time we spent playing with those cars that summer. My family moved away that fall, but that summer of the matchbox tree still remains as a sweet childhood memory for me.
What childhood game brings back good memories for you?
Now that it’s finally beginning to warm up, it’s wonderful to get out and examine the post-winter landscape. Congratulations! You made it through the dreary season, so now it’s time to daydream – consider changing everything by upgrading your abode! The economy is beginning to gain some momentum and attractive homes are flooding the market. On a walk yesterday, I saw several on display right here in my neighborhood!
Home #333
Wait til you see the back yard!
This warm and cozy split level built into a south facing hillside is surrounded by lush cooling grasses during the hottest part of summer, but in springtime its graceful rounded profile reaches out to capture the sun’s warming rays, providing a beautiful elevated view of the nearby shrubs as they come into bloom. Every family member will want to poke his or her head out the front door to welcome visitors and/or sound a warning about intruders. This earthy charmer is move-in ready!
Home #838
Just a hop from all the action!
Fantastic curb appeal is just one of the attractions of this roomy single level home, and wait until you see the rooftop deck! Note the detailed craftsmanship of the tooth-carved entryway, which opens into an expansive wind-protected too-tight-for-the-dog-to-get-in living area. Generous upstairs neighbors occasionally have lavish food-dropping parties, providing a delicious rain delivered right to your main living area! This family home has sheltered 5 generations of hearty rabbits, and that’s just in the past year.
Home #83
Best of both worlds!
This stunning penthouse apartment has been extensively remodeled to work more comfortably as a single level walk out. No more climbing with your arms (and cheeks) loaded full of groceries! Live close to the earth with an easily accessed garden and quick emergency egress. It’s the best possible combination of the breezy treetop lifestyle everyone wants with the solid grounded foundation that everyone needs!
Wow! All these places look better (and cheaper) than the place I’m in! Still, moving is a huge project, and I’m afraid I might suffer from buyer’s remorse (especially with home #83)! Maybe I wouldn’t be so interested in a change if I just vacuumed the space I’ve got and re-arranged the furniture I already have.
When has the grass only seemed greener on the other side?
Many thanks to those who sent kind words and condolences on the death of my mother, who passed away on February 2nd. She was a good person who enjoyed simple things. My mom loved to laugh, and she was a bit unconventional. She anchored our little family, cared for her friends and did her best to create some fun in the world.
The daughter of a New York stockbroker, there was a bit of money and status in her family. Her grandfather was a preacher who died young. Her great-grandfather was an officer and gatekeeper for a society of Mayflower Descendants. There was a moral code and a distinguished lineage to uphold. For women born into such families in the late 1920’s, the expectation was that they would marry well and play their role.
Mom came of age just as WWII ended. A friend at work had a brother who had dropped out of high school and had just completed an uncomfortable stint in the Navy – a character clearly from the other side of the tracks. Mom’s parents were not thrilled, but she married him anyway. Her mother’s disapproval faded as she discovered this polite new son-in-law folded his handkerchief carefully and was very, very handy around the house. Stuff got fixed, and small things like that matter.
Mom stayed at home while my brother and I were growing. She dyed her hair blonde and smoked, like a lot of women did in the 1950’s. We accompanied her and watched while she did all the Eisenhower era housewife/mother tasks – laundry; cleaning; feeding us meat loaf and mashed potatoes; being the chaperone on school trips; doing funny, silly, crafty things.
She became a scavenger. We would make the rounds of local bowling alleys to gather up discards from the piles of debris in back. With paint and cloth and patience, she could turn a cracked bowling pin into a wacky character – a debutante in her frilly dress or a mustachioed singer in a barbershop quartet. Kitschy? Without a doubt. But there was no embarrassment. It was inexpensive, creative fun. My mom was the sort of person who did uncomplicated things like that. She loved plants and gardens and feeding the birds and sitting outside.
She went into an extended stuffed animal phase and produced a large number of plush critters to sell at craft fairs for not quite enough money to make a profit. In between fairs she was always ready to sew a bear for a new baby. Many of these teddies (and dogs and rabbits) were handmade and embroidered with the child’s name and birth date. It makes me happy to think that these are still out in the world, even if they’ve been placed under beds or pushed to the back of closets. It’s the memories they made along the way that matter most.
In the ‘70’s she worked in the cashier window at Sears, at a time when department stores had a separate, secure place where you could go to pay your bills. Because the job involved handling a lot of money, she worked behind a daunting pane of glass in a fairly humorless setting. To inject a little levity, she and her cashier friends would dress up for holidays and Halloween – poodles, fairies, firecrackers. Nothing was too dumb.
Mom with my brother, Lee
Day-to-day she wore sweatshirts and blue jeans. If an activity required getting more dressed up than that, you had to ask yourself if it was worth the trouble. A fun outing was climbing on the lawn tractor to mow the side yard.
Mom was an animal lover who made room in her home for numerous pets, including two gigantic St. Bernards. The door was always open for neglected and desperate wanderers. She and my father welcomed several abandoned dogs and far too many stray cats. There was no question about this. It was simply what they did.
For the past three decades we lived 500 miles apart. She relished using the visiting grandmother’s prerogative to do whatever came into her head without regard for house rules or discipline. When Grandma Barbara came to visit, one of the first activities would be a festival of misbehavior called “The Sock Game.” It involved letting her grandson jump on the bed while both of them ate M&M’s and threw socks into the spinning ceiling fan. Nancy and I knew the ritual had begun when the crazy laughter started and an occasional sock would come sailing out the door.
Like I say, she was a fun-maker.
One of my earliest memories of my mother is a trip we took to an upstate New York lake in summer. I was very young and couldn’t swim, so the only way to get out to the area over my head was to hang on to her neck. As her feet bounced across the lake bottom, we moved towards the middle of the lake and I sensed the dangerous chill of the colder, deeper water all around. I was excited but not scared because I knew I was safe in her arms and felt completely surrounded by her warmth. “I’ve got you,” she said. And I knew she did.
My mom meant love and home and acceptance to me. That’s what every parent hopes to be for their child, which makes it no less of an achievement. It is common as a sweatshirt and as goofy as a bowling pin character, and it constitutes everything that is most important in the world. It’s a gift I was very lucky to receive.
Trail Baboon 