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?
Linda K. Sienkiewicz writes fiction, poetry and essays.
Her second novel, Love and Other Incurable Ailments, is coming October 27, 2026 from Regal House Publishing: When love letters from a far-away stranger fall into the hands of an anxious overthinker, she convinces herself she can save him—but her misguided scheme goes horribly wrong, and the pain is so great she fears she must flee the life and friends she’s grown to love.
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