When a former high school classmate teased me over the holidays on Facebook about using “big words”, he said he might use such words when he grew up. In reply I told him I’d never grown up – I still play make-believe and dress-up except these days I write down my games and call them novels. One of my cousins, who probably remembers my often elaborate childhood games all too well, was quick to chime in his agreement and I laughed because the stories I spun as long as I can remember aren’t so very different than the stories featuring my byline across the cover.
I suppose almost all little girls play “house” and mother their dolls or stuffed animals. They act out scenarios with Barbie dolls which also allow their imaginations a chance to guess at the reality one day of dating or driving or trying on fashions with friends. Young children seem to possess a deep creativity that I’m afraid may fade these days when they enter the realms of the electronic age.
I know one of my favorite games back in the day was “wedding” and I asked for the aid of my older cousins to hold my almost same age cousin in place as my groom.
I liked being a bride, a princess, a pioneer, nurse, a school teacher (ask my brother who suffered through endless lessons in what I liked to call ‘little school’), a mother, restaurant owner and waitress, a USO dancer, a ballerina, a wife, an outlaw, an aviatrix, and more. Whenever possible I used props, a lacy veil to be a bride, a pink tutu for my ballet dancing, a cap pistol to be an outlaw, and one of my mother’s dresses to become a pioneer woman. I wasn’t above moving a lamp into the center of the living room floor to become a campfire or turning a bed into a wagon train either.
By the time I turned nine, I thought I knew just who I’d marry one day – the boy next door except he lived next door to my aunt and uncle, not to me. He was older, all of ten but I spun many a sweet daydream about the day I’d wed Joe in dazzling white. Of course he grew up and I grew out of my crush but the idea lingered. Just as I save things I might use one day, a habit carried over from my Depression era grandparents, I keep ideas around too.
My next novel, A Patient Heart, comes out February 3 from Rebel Ink Press, in advance of Valentine’s Day and the idea of loving the boy next door revives in the story. With less than a month away until it’s out, I’ll share the cover blurb as an example of how I’m still playing make-believe:
As a little girl Catherine dreamed she'd marry Connor Donavan one day and as teenagers, that dream seemed within reach until Connor ended their relationship, left town and broke her heart. Ten years later, far from the old hometown, Catherine reports for work as a nurse one snowy January evening and learns that her new patient is none other than her old love, Connor. When he recognizes her, all the old feelings stir but a few sparks fly too. As Connor recovers from an accident, Catherine realizes she loves him more than ever and he seems to love her too. But after he leaves the hospital and convalesces at her home, his real life intrudes into their idyll. Connor leaves, Catherine stays until his message sends her speeding to Kansas City, Kansas and Connor's club....on Valentine's Day.
If telling stories means I’ve never grown up, then I’m still a kid at heart and will always be one!
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