Let's Pretend!

Childhood friends: Lori D. and Nyssa.
(Click picture for larger view)

"Childhood is the world of miracle and wonder; as if creation rose, bathed in the light, out of the darkness, utterly new and fresh and astonishing. The end of childhood is when things cease to astonish us." ~ Eugene Ionesco (1912 - 1994) Romanian-French dramatist

Let's pretend!! I'm the mommy and you're the grandma; or I'm the teacher and you're the student or we can both be astronauts! Let's pretend we have a ranch with lots of horses and mountains and this broom will be my golden Palomino and yours will be a white stallion. Let's pretend!

The joys of childhood when anything and everything you imagined could come true; the time of neverending possibilities, when hours drug out like days and weeks seemed like an eternity. Weaving story webs with friends in hats and baby dolls in strollers; giggling, singing, squealing and laughing until you dropped to the ground from exhaustion and pure satisfaction. The days when getting dirty all over was expected and making mudpies acceptable; when song lyrics such as "Down by the bay, where the watermelon grows...." and "I like to eat, eat, eat, apples and bananas..." were actually in vogue; and when art meant chalk drawings on the sidewalk or watercolors on butcher paper.

Do we lose this as adults? I hope not! Put me in a garden with wild splashes of color; or in a good book; or in the Uffizi museum of Florence and it comes flooding back. The colors, textures, word pictures, brush strokes, chiseled angles and smooth lines astonish me over and over again and that ability to lose oneself in time returns...... Childhood.

Submission for PXITE topic "childhood". (end of post)