Its a story thats been told a million times. We all grow up and (some of us) loose all of the imagination we had as children. For some of us, there in no Neverland corner in our minds that never truly grows up. There is no room in our sensible grown up lives for fairies that live in our well groomed and regularly pesticised gardens, or far away lands that can be entered from a looking glass in our now well organized and de-cluttered attics. As children we created imaginary friends who could fly, or turned a tree house into a space ship that circled the moon at least five times a night. I recall as a child, being convinced that i saw the Lochness monster in a canal in Chatham as we were driving through town enroute to Sarnia. I never once doubted that what I saw was true, but now that I am all grown up i am forced to tell myself that what i saw was just the whimsy of a little girl absolutely obsessed with sea creatures and my mind made up an image that projected itself into that river because i so wanted it to be true.( Now, whether or not that is true is still debatable if you ask me)
The question that I am asking today is: Why do we have to automatically assume everything we "imagined" as children is simply that; a figment of an over active imagination? There are some things that I made up as a child that i absolutely know now were make believe. But there are some memories that i choose not to chalk up to imagination. If that makes me crazy, than i accept the title with absolute pleasure. One memory in particular, that i can recall as if it was yesterday, is the one that i will tell you in the rest of this blog. As you read, try to remember something whimsical that you experienced as a child and decide whether or not you will accept it as make believe or an unexplained mystery that you were a part of.
When I was a little girl, my daddy used to tell me that every tree came alive at night and danced around the forest and neighbourhood. (For those of you who don't know, my daddy is Native American and I always just automatically assumed he knew everything there was to know about nature because Pocahontas did in the movie. Major stereotyping i know but i was 6, give me a break!). At first it made me a tad uneasy thinking of ominous oak trees loafing around my back yard, possibly peering into my window with its big, brown, bark eye. However, being the brave 6 year old seeker of adventure that I was, I decided to stage a stake out at the most forested magical place i knew… Grampa and Gramma's house.
My Grandparents lived in a little town called Sauble Beach in northern Ontario. A quaint little white cottage engulfed by a forest filled with woodland creatures and just a hop, skip and a jump away from a slightly untamed stretch of beach. In the summer we would drive up to see them almost every weekend so I waited for our next visit to put my daddy's claim to the test. So one night when we were visiting, I strategically asked my parents if i could sleep on the couch next to the window facing the backyard so i could spend the entire night waiting for the trees to come alive.
The the sun had set hours before, and I anxiously awaited for any sign of movement other than then summer wind swishing through the branches and leaves. When the clock struck 11:45 and I still had seen no movement what so ever I was left with only two things to believe: 1. My daddy was a liar (and of course that could not ever be the case!)… or 2. that the trees were nervous and just waiting for everyone to fall asleep before they started their nightly dance. The answer was simple. By the sound of both my grampa and daddy's nightly song of harmonized snoring filling the hallway leading to their rooms, i knew i was the only person awake. So i pretended to sleepily nestle into my blankets, close my eyes and fall asleep.
I had my eyes closed for about 2 minutes when i heard a faint creaking sound coming from the yard. Almost like the noise an old wooden sailboat makes as it rocks back and forth and hits the docks at the marina. It was nearing midnight and i just knew something magical was happening. I slowly crept out of my warm sheets and peeked my head over the edge of the couch and stared out at the moonlit forest. It started off with just one little tree's branches shaking a little harder than the faint summer breeze allowed. And then the maple tree behind it began to shift to the left, and the oak tree behind that shifted to the right, until at once every tree came alive and began dancing around the forest as if the wind was playing a waltz that only they could hear. Of course i was terrified at first. My daddy was right!! The forest is alive! But before i could jump off the couch and run for help, the tiny little cherry tree at the edge of the forest that i had climbed at least a million times that summer, stepped out from the intertwining dance and waved a branch at me as if to say "hello, you can come join us if you'd like." At that moment i was at ease and I laid there with my head blissfully resting on my grammas orange and brown plaid couch, watching the trees dance the night away to the beat of a silent fairy drum, until the sandman got the better of me and I slowly drifted away to sleep.
Now if I were any sane, normal, 23 year old young woman, I should really believe that I had fallen asleep whilst waiting for the trees to come alive and dreamed this whole scenario up. But thankfully I am not, and I chose to hold that memory dear to my heart and I will forever wait for the day I can tell my own daughter about the tree ballet that happens every night while the whole world sleeps.
And so, I leave you with a quote by a man that never truly grew up and because of it, allowed millions of children to dream and grow up to be imaginative dream chasers like me.
"Too many people grow up. That's the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up. They forget. They don't remember what it's like to be 12 years old. They patronize, they treat children as inferiors. Well I won't do that."
- Walt Disney
"Too many people grow up. That's the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up. They forget. They don't remember what it's like to be 12 years old. They patronize, they treat children as inferiors. Well I won't do that."
- Walt Disney
