Fairies, Thimbles, and Paper Hats

Look in Mom's eyes, you will see her joy of play.

Every mother has a memory of something her child said that will stick with her through time.  My mom has shared one of those kinds of memories many times in family gatherings about me.  She said I would often say, “Let’s ‘tend.”  So as you can already pick up, pretending for me came natural.  (However, that character trait didn’t always bring about good memories for my siblings, hehehe…later). 

I volunteer once a week at a pre-school and I love to work with small children.  It seems like I have worked with kids my whole life.  I love that age where pretending opens up the imagination and allows the kind of freedom in expression that overrides all that is real about us.  After being with the 4 and 5 year olds last week I came home wondering where I had inherited my ability to flee the real into the flight of the imagination. 

While pondering this I began to dust my Aunt Golden’s pump organ that was past down from her to mom, and then to me.  I have a little glass donkey sitting on it and beside the donkey is a ceramic thimble my youngest daughter brought back from a trip.  That glass donkey got me thinking about a glass rabbit mom had.  She used it once to put money in from the Tooth Fairy.  I thought for sure the Tooth Fairy had forgotten me and Mom said, “You know she often hides it around the house.  You should look around for it.”  I love my glass donkey.

Now my daughter told me the reason she bought me that thimble was because she remembered one rainy day when I taught her and a friend how to play hide the thimble.  I got to say that really meant a lot to me.  Hide the thimble was just one of the many games my mom also taught me to play.  Mom was great about teaching us how to play with little of nothing.  She would make a spinner with string and a button, teach us how to play hide and seek, color for hours with us, play Chinese checkers with a homemade board and marbles, and one of my favorites (I still do this with kids today) make paper hats from newspapers.  She constructed our Halloween costumes from her closet, showed us how to make cities under the tree in the front yard with dirt, rocks, and sticks.  She even allowed me to put green icing on my chocolate cake.

That freedom of imagination was a wonderful gift that I will continue to treasure.  I hope to past it down to any child that would allow me too, and to any adult willing to let go of the real and become a child again.  So I know now, just like you do, where I got my imagination from.  I got it from my Mom. 

Look in Mom's eyes, you will see her joy of play.

Every mother has a memory of something her child said that will stick with her through time.  My mom has shared one of those kinds of memories many times in family gatherings about me.  She said I would often say, “Let’s ‘tend.”  So as you can already pick up, pretending for me came natural.  (However, that character trait didn’t always bring about good memories for my siblings, hehehe…later). 

I volunteer once a week at a pre-school and I love to work with small children.  It seems like I have worked with kids my whole life.  I love that age where pretending opens up the imagination and allows the kind of freedom in expression that overrides all that is real about us.  After being with the 4 and 5 year olds last week I came home wondering where I had inherited my ability to flee the real into the flight of the imagination. 

While pondering this I began to dust my Aunt Golden’s pump organ that was past down from her to mom, and then to me.  I have a little glass donkey sitting on it and beside the donkey is a ceramic thimble my youngest daughter brought back from a trip.  That glass donkey got me thinking about a glass rabbit mom had.  She used it once to put money in from the Tooth Fairy.  I thought for sure the Tooth Fairy had forgotten me and Mom said, “You know she often hides it around the house.  You should look around for it.”  I love my glass donkey.

Now my daughter told me the reason she bought me that thimble was because she remembered one rainy day when I taught her and a friend how to play hide the thimble.  I got to say that really meant a lot to me.  Hide the thimble was just one of the many games my mom also taught me to play.  Mom was great about teaching us how to play with little of nothing.  She would make a spinner with string and a button, teach us how to play hide and seek, color for hours with us, play Chinese checkers with a homemade board and marbles, and one of my favorites (I still do this with kids today) make paper hats from newspapers.  She constructed our Halloween costumes from her closet, showed us how to make cities under the tree in the front yard with dirt, rocks, and sticks.  She even allowed me to put green icing on my chocolate cake.

That freedom of imagination was a wonderful gift that I will continue to treasure.  I hope to past it down to any child that would allow me too, and to any adult willing to let go of the real and become a child again.  So I know now, just like you do, where I got my imagination from.  I got it from my Mom.