A number of my growing up years were lived in a house and surrounding yard that showed me the magic of lives that had been and so could be imagined, and lives that could never be, but could be imagined, and that helped create a mind that could imagine anything and anybody: me. But not only me; one of my daughters as well who wrote a story based around the place I grew up. The sharing of lives brings more life to the sharing.
Let’s begin with the yard that taught me to believe in the imaginary and the extraordinary. The long drive (well, okay, it wasn’t that long as long is measured, certainly not long as the crow flies), was lined with thick lilac bushes on either side that could be a dark, encroaching omen, falling in at strangers and warning them off, or could just as easily beckon you into another world: our world. A world of sunshine and space and wondrous buildings, children and laughter, puppies and kittens; a world of make-believe quicksand pits, fantasy realms, heroes and bad guys. Other places only our imaginations could form. From snow-filled hollows that became quicksand and tried to suck you down (all the way to China – I’m sure that’s what we decided), and a Basswood tree limb you could ride like a galloping horse, to making snow forts under the huge pines to keep safe from an unseen enemy (I’m thinking it was actually the bitterly cold winds we were seeking to elude). Even the front yard felt “portioned off”; like it was another place. A grander, more civilized, formal place. Our enclosed yards and stretched-out 5–8-acre utopia behind it were a child’s dream. [Okay, sidetrack, so I remembered being told the field was 40 acres, but my mom says 5-8 acres, but she can't remember for sure. All I can say is it seemed like 40 when my brothers and I traipsed across it all the way back to the railroad tracks...but as my eldest sister reminded me, things always look bigger when we are kids...(I still say it was 40. I doubt even I could have imagined that number – unless someone told it to me who didn't really know the true number). Anyway...] At the back of the entrance yard was the old three car garage with one section that housed an antique car and several antique toys – our introduction to real history – and behind it were two antique buildings, one a school, one supposedly a chicken house (but that I was sure originally had to have been more than a massive, house-style engineered chicken coop. It had to be! My fantasy and my logic both told me so!). Anyway, all of this, including the garage, brought a sense of history and, thus, stories. Of people who lived there long before. People who breathed and worked and learned; who went to school in the one room school house or collected eggs from laying hens – in the ridiculously fancy chicken house – and who stoked the fires in the old cast iron stoves. The lives that had been and so could be imagined…and written about.
The vast fields (okay, only one actual field, but it was pretty big to us kids – it was the 40 acre, I mean, 5–8-acre section of our fantasy lands) became lands for safaris and held poisonous trees (okay, it was a crab apple tree, but you have to admit, crab apples are really bitter, so they made a great poisonous plant; even better, it was also climbable); they (the imaginary fields that were in truth only one field) were made into places far, far away from home – places to discover, places where you fought off enemies. Places where you had adventures. Places.
As for the house – which, of course, was haunted and pushed the imagination onto another realm altogether – made a great backdrop for hidden nooks and crannies, “creepy” basement encounters, and plays of all sorts. It was in this house that we watched The Wizard of Oz on our first color television and we found out that when Dorothy steps out of the house into Oz, it’s all in color!! Previous years we thought the whole film was in black and white. That was a huge blast for imaginations to run wild. Color! The place of magical characters was the place that was really alive…or was it? It was at the least a great place to visit. Indeed, a spurt of imagination growth.
Being raised in a rambling house surrounded by lilac bushes, trees, and antique outbuildings gave me a true sense of imagination, of other unknown places – and then later, as I was growing out of make-believe (or so I thought) there were the wonderful worlds of Middle Earth and Narnia to keep me going. It’s no wonder that fantasy chose me to write it. I started writing fantasy stories when I was about thirteen and I don’t think I ever stopped believing in the unbelievable. I certainly still love to create in my mind places and characters I’ve never known before…
But I don’t want to impart all the secrets of that house and yard in one blog – I’ll save some for another time. Maybe there’s a book in the making…if there is, there’s bound to be some fantasy parts.
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