Saturday, November 14, 2009

Imagination

I imagine, therefore I belong and am free.
Lawrence Durrell

This entry is for L & L who were my tree-climbing-go-cart-driving-wild-yahoo-co-conspirators on all the adventures of our childhood, for A and C who continue to be my partners-in-crime and Wonder Women (even if we don't fly that much anymore), and for H who won't read this but whose red cape brought all of it back to my mind.

Something turned my mind back over the days of my childhood and the joys of imagination recently, and it's been like discovering an old box of pictures tucked up in a forgotten corner of a closet. I've been thinking about all the long summer days, all the games, all the things we used to do when we were little, and I've had sort of a permanent smile on my face the past couple of days over it.

The tree where our monkey swings once hung is a memory now. It died long ago, and Katrina felled the husk of it. Only an uneven place remains in my front yard to mark the spot where so many pleasant hours of fun were spent. I can still remember, though, as if the pecan tree's verdant canopy still shaded that ground, my cousins and me playing there. Those swings were planes, wings, and flying horses for us, and we spent untold hours there. The heavy marine-grade nylon ropes had to be replaced routinely because we wore them out so frequently.

We took from somewhere the idea that we were medieval knights, got some of my grandmother's heavy walking sticks from her collection in the house, and did aerial combat with them. Joust was one of our favorite games, swinging through the air and clashing the walking sticks together like swords or lances, depending on our whims. We did that for years....until one of our parents happened to see it. I think it was my Dad. Needless to say, he wasn't best pleased.

Looking back on it, a lot of our favorite games were a little dangerous. Climbing the big magnolia that still sits at the end of my driveway wasn't dangerous, but tossing the "grenades" of the cones definitely was. Some of the things we did with the old golf cart, the go cart, and the four-wheeler probably qualified, too.... The time my friend decided she was Wonder Woman and jumped off the china cabinet in her living room definitely counts. She did get airborne, though, for a splendid minute. It almost offset the moment of unconsciousness that followed....

Whatever we were doing, whatever the risk involved (or however blissfully ignorant of it we were), I remember those times as days of glorious joy. I remember sailing through the yard on bikes transformed into motorcycles, Roman chariots, western horses, space vehicles, and the cars from the Dukes of Hazzard sometimes with a blanket tied around my own neck to make a cape if the fantasy called for it (and sometimes if it didn't, because hey, who doesn't look good in a cape?). I remember taking every single extra quilt my grandmother had and turning the front bedroom into a giant tent/castle/fort in which each one of the three of us had our own highly-contested, organized, and decorated zone. During the long summers, we were Egyptian gods, Dr. Who, and Star Wars characters. We taught ourselves hieroglyphics and Germanic runes. We explored Native American legends from all over North and South America, picked out Apache names for ourselves, and tried to learn how to use bullwhips. We ransacked every library in our reach to feed whatever our current obsession happened to be at the time.

I believe I am a better adult because of those days of wonder as a child, and not just because I have so many beautiful memories to turn over in my heart like light-filled jewels. I found interests then that I continue to pursue now, and I also became aware of the world as a place of amazing and interesting things if only I would look for them. I think all of us, all of my friends who used to go with me on those voyages of exploration in our backyards and backrooms, continue to enjoy the world of fantasy, too, continue to enrich our lives with our own dreams and the dreams of others. We may not be running through the yard with our walking sticks clashing or our Wonder Woman Underoos on these days, but we're all still free, as Durrell says, because we can imagine.

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