When I was ten years old I walked home from school alone, writing lyrics in my head and trying them out to different melodies. I probably wrote my best poem at 11, and volumes of poetry throughout high school. I tried my hand at writing stories for romance magazines at 21. I got two checks for $75 each and realized I couldn’t raise my son as a single mom on sporadic checks for less than a month’s rent.
I got a real job. I went into advertising and started writing copy for TV spots, newspaper ads and tri-fold brochures. It wasn’t my dream, but it allowed me to partially satisfy my creative needs. Someday, I knew, I would go back to REAL writing.
I started my own advertising agency at 23 and soon became entrenched in the daily operation of running a business – employee problems, client relations and budgeting. My writing began to take a back seat. I promised myself someday I would leave the world of business behind and retire to a cabin in the woods to write.
By the mid-seventies I joined my peers experimenting with drugs and found renewed creativity. The only problem was that the deep and thought provoking novels I wrote between midnight and 3 A.M. looked surprisingly like gibberish when the stimulants left my body. Once again, I promised myself that this was a world I would soon leave behind to slip away to my cabin in the woods where I could be who I really was and write things that would change the world forever.
I’m 57 now and every decade has brought added responsibilities – more children, a growing business, volunteer Boards and a whole slew of animals to care for. The cabin in the woods has remained always – a phantom, beckoning in the mist.
When I met my friend Sue for a few days in Colorado I took a look at a few cabins that were for sale. As always I told myself that I couldn’t take that much money away from my family for something that was my dream alone, I would probably never get there anyway, and I should just go home, decorate the guest room with wood paneling and a wood stove, and do my writing in there.
I came home from Colorado and obsessed for a week over my absolute craving for one of the cabins I had seen – picture window overlooking the mountains, a wood stove crackling in the corner – and knew I had come to the moment of reckoning. Did I really want the cabin I had dreamed about for 30 years?
The answer was: yes, with modifications. I dreamed of a cabin so isolated only the elk and mountain lions would find me. This one is a few miles outside a fairly upscale little town an hour from Denver. I dreamed of toughing out the cold as I waded through snowdrifts to get to the outhouse. This one has running water, and really pretty tile on the bathroom wall. I dreamed of nothing but the wind blowing through the trees to break the silence as I meditated on my next great American novel. This one has a cable connection.
The point is, our dreams we hold dear in our youth are sometimes just that – fantasies that only make sense to someone without the life experience to understand the ramifications of fantasies that become reality. But oftentimes those fantasies symbolize the very core of our beings. They’re the parts of us that never change, and stand to bring us the greatest satisfaction we can find in life. We may need to modify the dream to make it work better for the lifestyle we’ve created. But we should never, ever diminish its importance in our lives.
I am like a little kid now, fidgeting, planning, longing for my next trip to Colorado. Back to my fantasy. Back to the part of me that has never changed – the part that truly defines the ten year old girl and the 57 year old woman.
The only childhood dream I remember that connected with what was clearly a dream come true, is that when I grew too big to float in a bathtub, that I knew/felt/dreamed that I would have a big enough bathtub to float in when I grew up.
That was before I became aware of my congenital heart disease and the doctors' predictions of dying before reaching adulthood.
The dream was apparently stronger than physical "reality" and the 40' indoor pool in the home I called "Villa Amari" was kept at 98 degrees.
If you are interested in more about that dream into reality see: http://members.cox.net/mystichobo/stories.htm#aplace
Posted by: Suzanne | April 01, 2006 at 10:19 AM