A Family of Daydreamers
I grew up with powerful parents. Not because they were rich and famous, but because they knew the value of daydreaming.
My father once brought home several huge empty boxes from his office and asked me to imagine what my perfect playhouse would look like. I drew it. He cut and taped boxes together in our basement to match my design. We painted it. My mother stepped in for the finishing touches: scrap fabric curtains and window boxes filled with Easter grass and paper flowers.
My mother took me to the library every week and sat beside me to help with complicated vocabulary. My father taught me how to fly a kite and that the best part of the adventure was lying in the grass, watching it dip and swirl.
When my sixth-grade teacher asked us to write a story about the earth in the future, my parents brainstormed ideas with me at dinnertime. As faithful Twilight Zone viewers, my dad encouraged my space adventure with an alien encounter. My devotion to novels had taught me that a story required a plot with characters and dialogue. I churned out five pages and was chosen to read my tale to all the first through fifth graders. My mother listened in the kitchen as I practiced my oral presentation of A Trip to the Unknown. I found it recently in a box I had never opened, marked: Karen’s School.
She knew my literary destiny was sealed.
So years ago when Cliff and I traded thoughts on parenting, I was relieved by his answer: “I want Maggie to grow up the way you did.”
We hung an IMAGINE sign in her room where she spent considerable time reading and playing with her dollhouse.
For a parent open house, her second-grade teacher displayed illustrated stories from each student. They had been asked to write about magic. Most of them were one-sentence tales, along the lines of “Once upon a time a bear turned into a bird.” But Maggie’s had a plot. Her main character spoke. Although some of the tissue-paper artwork is missing, enough remains to accompany The Girl who Found a Witch’s Hat.
I saved it.
She’s in college now, but I still think about parenting and the time and money spent on after-school classes. They hand their children over to other adults who occupy huge spaces in those formative brains. During Cliff’s years in education, he often spoke with dismay about his over-scheduled students.
We were periodically criticized for not making our daughter take tennis lessons or piano lessons or violin lessons. Nor did we send her to math camp. We were lectured: “You need to force her to go.” Cliff patiently responded, “Everything she will ever know doesn’t need to happen now.”
Because Maggie turned out to be slow when taking reading assessments, we faced accusations from an elementary principal who said, “She takes too long to think about the answers and runs out of time.”
“Is that why time matters?” Cliff asked. “To circle more standardized test answers?”
Give children lessons, lessons, lessons. Train them. Teach them to hurry. Those voices badgered us throughout Maggie’s childhood.
No. Give them a sense of wonder. Let them daydream.
