When I was very young I squatted in the broken place in the sidewalk that was in the shape of Africa and imagined there were elephants playing in the yard between my house and my granny's. I pretended that I was a lion or a beautiful grown up lady wearing earrings and carrying a jar of water on my head or a monkey. I never invited my sisters or brother or friends to come to Africa with me. It was my own private continent at the border of where we were and were not allowed to play.
I never told anyone about that. In fact, I seldom thought of my childhood trips to Africa until one night, while sitting at Starbucks and breathing in car exhaust, I abruptly declared to my friend Chan how terribly I missed going there. When I said it, I knew that it was true. The tree roots that had broken the sidewalk grew and grew until Africa became a ragged gap between two up-turned concrete slabs and not in the shape of anything at all.
And then, because I was a little bit drunk, I started to cry while Chan told me that once she dug to the bottom of her sandbox and called the wooden planks she found China and pretended she was playing with her cousins there, cousins that she sometimes heard her parents talk about in low voices late at night but that she'd never met.
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Comments
prolly fearing for my safety, some do gooder like a parent or something, filled it in when i wasn't looking. my young spirit was crushed (which i suppose was better than crushing my young body) and i didn't have the heart to start over.
i know, me me me, but i enjoyed this.
I can see boys, my 3-year old especially, learning imagine play. The hole seems to go very deep. We like to encourage their imaginations and their pretend stories. Though sometimes, it’s a little heartbreaking to hear the sadness in my son’s voice as he wails that he really wants to go to the moon and jump up and down – higher than the tall building where I work... Aww.
Cap'n- I call people Cap'n all the time in conversation, mostly when I cannot recall their names. Also, I'm very impressed by your digging skills.
Hy-Thanks.
Brian-Thanks to you too.
David- Adults, I think, forget too much of the sadness of even a happy childhood. It seems to me that there's a great deal of discovery of one's limits. I, for one, was genuinely grieved to discover I could never ever be anyone else or live in any other time, even for a second or two.
Mary- Thanks.
Guy- Please tell Forbes Magazine to fuck themselves. Chicago is by far my favorite American city.