My friend Desiree Cooper shared this post on Facebook. What memories it brought back to me! Without doubt, my creative pastimes as a child shaped who I am today.
Solitary Play
For hours, I would lay on the living room floor and stare at our stucco ceiling. I conjured an old man’s face, a horse’s head, a fish jumping out of its bowl…. It’s a wonder my mother didn’t ask me what I was doing, but she let me be.
I filled large pads of manila drawing paper with drawings. I folded, cut and stapled pages into hand-sized books. In them, I penciled cheesy love stories with illustrations.
The woods behind my house were my playground. Deep in a private world, I talked happily to the spiders and salamanders as if they were my friends, creating ruses and adventures. I created huts from sticks and mud.
From my mother’s many shoe boxes, I made doll houses for my trolls with beds, tables, televisions and art on the walls. I hand stitched itty bitty clothes for them from scraps of fabric.
I saved my favorite picture books. Many of them have pencil marks, as if I had tried to write my own stories before I knew the alphabet.
Playmates
My playmate Jennifer and I created a cast of characters and scenarios with our toy collection of rubber erasers shaped like bears, ducks, elephants, hippos, rabbits and pigs. I knew the names of all her critters, she knew all of mine, and they all had distinct personalities.
Another playmate, Jackie, and I played army and we fought the Commies (this was the early sixties). We spent most of our time building fortifications around the ravine behind his house and learning how to spy. We strapped our trolls into toy jeeps and pulled them by strings through the woods.
If I groused about being bored when my friends weren’t around, my mother sent me outside. Fresh air. Go run around the house six times. Either that or she gave me chores, so I became good at occupying myself.
Translate that to adult pursuits
No wonder that as an adult, I enjoy creating fictional worlds, writing poetry, and making art.
How about you? What games or pursuits did you partake in that helped shape who you are today?
Thank you for visiting.
Linda K. Sienkiewicz is a writer, poet, and artist:
Multi-finalist award winning novel In the Context of Love
Picture book Gordy and the Ghost Crab
Latest poetry chapbook: Sleepwalker
Connect with Linda: LinkTree
I loved reading about what you were like as a child. If we’d grown up at the same time and place, we would have been good buddies. 🙂
🙂
A friend on Twitter wrote: “I played basketball, volleyball, and softball. It taught me how to be a team player, and how to lose gracefully by congratulating the other team.”
As a kid who was usually picked last in gym team sports, I admire her athleticism, and told her so.
She responded, “Well, I can’t sing, draw, or play an instrument, so thankfully there was something I was decent at.”
Excuse me?? Diana is a writer, retired police/fire dispatcher and Army Vet! That, to me, is talent!
I rounded up my younger siblings and the neighbors and opened up my first school as teacher. Also produced plays with the same captive group. Driveway theater was the best.