So here I am, sitting outside. I am writing and my three year old is off on a discovery. Between picking “flowers” (one person’s weeds is another’s bouquet), throwing rocks at the rhododendrons, (who by all accounts, started it first), and making archeological digs in the dirt, I would say that it is a pretty good day.
It is probably not unlike my childhood summer days. With some exceptions, I suppose. I was the youngest of three children. Yep, I’m the baby of the family. Now I know you are thinking, “Well that explains a lot”, and I am sure that it does. Being the youngest meant that I was either the “tag along” or I found myself playing alone. As the “tag along”, your input or suggestion upon what to play, where to go, and what to do are of no consideration to the older siblings. After all, they probably didn’t want you there anyway.
When you are playing alone, you are limited to the types of games that you can participate in. Red Rover and Freeze Tag are not very satisfying when you are flying solo. But being alone a lot does give ample opportunity to pretend, imagine, wonder, and most of all dream. And that I still do, to this very day.
It seemed like that there was always a family that my parent’s were friends with who had kids about the same age as our little sibling tribe. That works out well as you always have someone to “hang” with. But even then, the oldest ones were the bosses, the middle ones were the aggrieved, and us “babies” were the spoiled “tag alongs”.
One particular friends of the family lived next door right next door. Their kids were the same ages as us, but they were all girls. This was during the days when girls were “icky”. Not to play with, that was fine, but there was no “magic” back then. We lived in a small house on the corner. Across the street in one direction was the friend’s house. They had in their possession, well yard that is, a big rusted out ship. It was our play area.
There is, my friend, nothing better than a ship with all of its compartments where spiders and bugs and slugs and a snake or two reside. Not to mention rusted out metal with sharp jagged edges coated with tetanus. We just didn’t concern ourselves with the possibility of getting bit, scratched or infections as we played. After all, the sea is a dangerous lady. And we had worlds to explore.
Across the street in the other direction was the Skagit River. I would just walk across the small two-lane road and up a little embankment and there I was, after the 100-foot stroll, face to face with the great river. Keep in mind that my family moved from there the year when I was in the second grade. I am not sure how long I would spend just gazing at the water’s movement. From a five year olds perspective, it was probably hours. But nevertheless, I dreamed.
I am not much of a swimmer and I am not much of a sailor, but I love to look out upon the water, be it a river or an ocean. It is there that I am everything that I think I am. It is there that I dream. It is there that I “be”.
Yeah, I am sitting outside on this first day of summer writing and remembering. And my boy is with me. Right now, he is trying to eat a flower. I am with my boy who, like me, dreams. And who, like me, can just “be”.
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