Earlier I had an idea for a children's book. When I was young my mother used to read fairy tales to us. She bought my sister's and I a set of illustrated Raggedy Ann books. There are around 20 in this particular series, and they were written a long, long time ago. The Bobs Merrill company published them, and my mother bought them in the grocery store. They had them on sale for like $1.25 each; kind of like kids today collect the prizes from McDonald's or Wendy's? She kept them for us through the years. Periodically I would go borrow two at a time, and then next time I visited I would return those two and get another two. There is so much comfort in those books for me. They are my childhood, they were my mother's gift to us, but more. I love the sweet fantasy, the beautiful stories of how good combats bad. It is what I wish for in this world of ours today. When my mother died we took very little from her house. My older sister did could not bear with us changing mom's house and disassembling it. My younger sister and I wanted she and her family to have it, to own it, to live in it. Instead my sister chose to continue renting her own tiny house just a few blocks away. Mom's house still is not in probate, still legally belongs to my mother, and all of her things are in there; our history, our memories, our childhoods. Her boyfriend continues to live there, and he paid off the mortgage a few years ago. He lives there rent free, paying the property tax, I hope. Not long after she died I was having a hard time. My own divorce was just a few years old and missing my mom was insult onto injury. I asked Mark to mail me a few of the books for comfort. He mailed me the entire set. It was one of the most touching and endearing things given to me in my whole life. The books live with me, although I never thought I would have them given to me. I am the one without children. I am the one who has no one to pass them down to. But they live here, and my heart and soul love having them here. They are special. Today I was thinking of those books and thinking what a treasure to children Johnny Gruelle wrote. The tale of two rag dolls who have such goodness in them and travel throughout the world of fairies and gnomes, elves, spreading kindness and cheer. Cookies grow on trees and soda water springs from fountains in the ground. I imagined myself writing tales to parallel those of the Raggedy's. Of goodness, kindness, light - hope. It is what our world needs more of. It is definitely a start to the writing life I want to create for myself. Why not children's books with such a sweet, simple message? I wonder if children today would read them, or appreciate them in our fast paced world? I am willing to bet there are children that still have innocence and joy and like simpler things. Not all children are like those I encounter - filled with the sorrow that life brings and the pain and suffering; anger, angst, lack of hope. There have to more children like others I know and have helped give a joy of reading to - with parents who do care about their child's education and welfare. Parents who still read to their children and gave birth to them to love and cherish. What message I can give to children? Continued innocence, a belief in things we cannot see; simple adventure - joy?
I always wanted children. I did not want them immediately when I was a young adult. I wanted them eventually. First, I wanted to move west, become a poet, live a Bohemian life, to travel, to live, to experience. I wanted to lay in a high mountain meadow among the tall grasses and waving wildflowers while I watched clouds float over snowy peaks. I wanted to feel the earth under me, watch the sky above me. I wanted to watch sunsets and sunrises, to live in a cabin, to write words that flowed from my soul. I did not want to get married. There is a Bob Seger song, Roll Me Away, that speaks to my soul. "Stood alone on a mountaintop looking out at the great divide. I could go east, I could go west, it was all up to me to decide." That is what I wanted. But eventually I planned to come off that mountain top and choose a husband - to meet my soul mate, my split apart, my eternal heart. I wanted to have children and raise them, passing down all of the wonderful things I learned about life and living to them; pass on those lessons that were passed to me through my mother, her mother, her mother's mother; from all of our ancestors throughout time. Once I did see my children in Steve's eyes; I saw them as plain as day. But God had other plans.
I think my soulmate is waiting for me somewhere else. I had a marriage sooner than I ever planned, and that lasted a long time, but not forever. I did not move out west, although I have traveled there many times. I cannot pass my life lessons on to my children, or even my nieces and nephews because my path took me far apart from their young lives. I can pass on a little of myself to strangers children; children who are in need of life lessons and skills and knowledge - in need of love. But I also feel that is not my destiny. It occurred to me today that the way I can pass on myself to my unborn children is to write stories for them; stories to be shared as my mother shared stories with me. Maybe that is the path I am supposed to follow now. Today, on mother's day, I do not have a living mother to honor. My mother and my step-mother, my grandmothers, my Godmother - all are in heaven shining down on me. My unborn children are with them, maybe waiting to be born in another life where I can love them and pass myself on through them. They wait with my soulmate, in another plane in another time, in another life. In this life I live now, my destiny feels like it is to share my heart and soul through my thoughts and my words. We make the best of what we have in the life we have been given.
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