I am five years old. I am waiting as patiently as I can, chewing anxiously on the ends of my long blond braids that hang over my shoulders.
The house is quiet. Today is not a nursery school day and I have nothing to do. My brother and sisters are at school. Even if they were home, there are too many years between us for them to be playmates. They lock themselves in their rooms, they talk on the phone, they find ways to torment me.
She comes to collect me just after lunch time. I don’t know how often she comes. Once a week? Once a month? When my mother needs a break? I don’t know. But I wait, chewing on my braids.
Finally, I see her walking up the street. Her bright, red hair appears first, and the rest of her follows. She carries a small, canvas tote bag. I know it is full of snacks; ones that I don’t like, healthy ones, like nuts and raisins and cut up apples, but I will eat them anyway.
I run out the door, wave good bye to my mother, and take my neighbor’s hand, which smells like chicken soup. I chatter my nonsensical chatter into her open ears as we walk. We skip and gallop and shuffle our feet around our wooded neighborhood until we reach a stretch of the road that is not occupied by a 1960s raised ranch. Later, this land will be bulldozed and flattened, and big, vinyl sided colonials will sit here, at our special spot. We step a little further into the uninhabited woods and stop when we see our rock. It is a large, flat boulder of a thing, low to the ground, and just about perfect for sitting and daydreaming and eating health-food-store snacks.
We climb up onto the rock. I sit cross legged with my elbows on my knees and chin cupped into my hands. She sits on the rock like it’s a chair, with her legs just touching the ground. Her body may not be as nimble as my five year old one, but her imagination, oh, her imagination, is as stretchable and agile as they come.
I never know where we will end up during this hour of afternoon story telling. Sometimes we are in an old, creaky castle and there is a princess and a mean dragon to slay. Sometimes we are under the ocean waters where we swim with the jellyfish, who give us peanut butter and huckleberry jam sandwiches, if we ask nicely. Sometimes we are right here in these woods, looking at the cloud pictures above us.
Today, as I listen to her voice, a voice that weaves a tale with years of experience, a giant bird with beautiful, white wings swoops down to our rock and scoops us up into the sky. It flies us to another world, takes us to a land where anything can happen, and everything does. We are in the rain forest and the monkeys serenade us. There are big, bright flowers that open up and offer us honey, and straws to slurp it up with. There are creatures that I have never heard of before, but that I can see perfectly if I use my best listening ears. We stay here for awhile, in this present, listening to the drips and squawks and rattles among the trees. When we grow sleepy and our curiosity runs thin, the giant bird magically reappears, stretches out its wings and brings us home, back to our rock.
In these fairy tale moments, when my eyes are closed, I am swallowed up in adventure made just for me. Without me, I wonder, would these stories exist? No, I shake my head. Here, on our rock, I am part of the plot.
Here, I am not bored. I am not worried. I am not too little.
I have a place that is all my own, and a Story Teller who brings my afternoons to life.
