Dear Helen, Dear John,
It’s October 1st and day three of my week of celebrating some of my favorite things. October was a special month for my family growing up because it usually meant the first paycheck for my dad in several months and the time when we were finally able to get some new school clothes (even though school had been in session for awhile already). I loved school, so fall was a fun time for me.
Fall is still my favorite season. When I lived in Southern California as a young girl, fall was my favorite time to roller skate because it was a little cooler and the wind was especially crisp and fresh against my face then. I spent hours skating in circles at the end of our cul-de-sac, backwards and forwards as fast as I could go. Then, I’d imagine a song in my head and pretend I was an olympic ice skater, and adjust my speed and direction to the music I was enjoying in my mind accordingly.
Because I attended the schools where my dad taught almost until high school, I was used to hearing his favorite music as he drove us there and back in the car, so it is no surprise that the song that makes me most nostalgic for the happy parts of my childhood and those brilliant fall days is this one:
I was also fond as a little girl of stories about little people, like The Borrowers, and I imagined myself into their world often. In fact, as an eight-year-old, I used to offer to give wagon rides to the neighborhood kids as I gave them tours of the neighborhood “where the little people lived.” Even a free wagon ride was not enough inducement for most of the neighborhood kids to come with me. After a tearful few minutes with my mom at home, she filled the wagon with my stuffed animals and I took them on tours to my favorite places instead. I think it was that experience really, more than any other, that taught me to be willing to do the things that were important to me alone if necessary. That has served me well often, as I tend to have different likes and dreams than most of the people I know, and it has helped me not to conform to peer pressure in order to fit in. I have a very wise mother to thank for that.
Something I’ve done lately that has been helping me to rekindle the brilliant imagination I had as a little girl has been working my way through Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. When I was struggling to speak or write after the recent death of someone very dear to me, I found that I could manage my feelings better by drawing instead. The great thing about this book is that it doesn’t just teach you how to draw, it helps teach you how to see. I noticed after sketching several of the exercises that I was starting to see pictures in clouds, and floor tiles, and the grain of the wood around me again- a favorite childhood pastime of mine that I have missed.
I started this post with skating today so I think I will end it with skating as well. It took me until I was in my thirties to pursue ice skating. It’s kind of tricky mentally and emotionally to pursue a dream where the typical “deadline” for success and excellence is long passed; but one of the best things about childhood for me was always being able to see beyond current realities and impossibilities to what I really wanted out of life ahead. I love how I feel when I’m skating. It’s a struggle to get my body to respond quickly and accurately to any activity I do some days, but it’s never more satisfying for me when it happens, than when it happens while I’m on the ice. That childhood dream that I can’t quite let go of, motivates me to exercise and keep trying even on days when showering is a major challenge for me. I want to be healthy- really, really healthy- but it is wanting to skate like this, in my favorite ice skating routine of all time, that actually gets me up and doing the squats, and the balances, and the stretches for a few minutes here and a few minutes there so that when I have the opportunities to ice skate, my muscles are present and raring to go- just waiting to be used and experienced with joy.
That joy in using my body beautifully and well, along with the ability to keep dreaming big dreams, are two of my favorite things.
Still very much the little girl you knew,
Melanie
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