30 days of letters, Day 17: Someone from your childhood

Oh! This one will be fun!

I was one of those strange children that had an imaginary friend. I still remember him vividly. For a very young me, he existed as real as anyone. I don't remember what I called, him. My mom doesn't either.


To my imaginary friend,

I was a strange lonely child. A changeling who lived in her own little world. But, I still remember you. You were impossibly tall. You wore tight pants with carnival stripes. You had a hat and silly sleeves on your burgundy jacket. We'd play hide and seek. Sometimes you helped me get into trouble. Sometimes you help me get OUT of trouble. I remember your stories, your explanations for the world that I inhabited.

Mountains were sleeping giants, and the trees were their hair. Closets held worlds. That garage in the yard had a small hole that if it was looked out of with the left eye at precisely three o clock in the afternoon gave me a glimpse of magic worlds. I still remember, sitting in the stuffy dark. I remember trying not to sneeze, my eye pressed firmly against that hole, seeing into something.. amazing. something hazy and green and beautiful. That hole SHOULD have given me a glimpse of my mothers hollyhock bushes. It should have shown me two mattresses slowly rotting off their frames. It didn't. I only remember the wolrds I saw in my dreams, but I still believe, A little, that I was given a gift of magic.

To this day I wonder. How can a 4 year old imagine something like you all on her own? Certainly I was brighter then the average child, but before anyone told me I knew a lot of things about spiders (things YOU had taught me). Before anyone else told me I knew about the cycle of rain: Water evaporation - clouds, etc. These were things I remember YOU teaching me.

There are times I still catch glimpses of the world we inhabited in my childhood. There are times it makes me wonder if I'm mad. It also makes me feel blessed, gifted, magic.

So, when my own daughter insisted, at a young age, that her "friend" needed her own plate at the table? I set it. I sit back and watch her play. Wondering...

What makes an imaginary friend?

And I feel lucky. Not only that I had you, but that she has a special little magical friend to keep her company too.

I miss you, but I think you're still part of me. One of the better parts too.

~A