Dreams

It is nearly the only thing I ever wanted - outside of flight and the stars. I was always a very romanticly inclined child, even if it was tinged with rather a lot of darkness and doubt.

A garden, a cup of tea, cotton lawn garments, and a book...Helen Allingham's rendition is quite like it. Once I had something quite like it, a garden and a swing, a pond and a pool...and lost it all. All that work and the lovely, lovely flowers...

When I was alone there in that year of quiet repose I would often allow myself to go out in the early morning, the fine gowns and robes dragging in the dew. It was a sort of separate world I lived in, far from the workaday life I'd known since I was 16.

It was a dreamworld wherein I held to no schedule but that of my need for sleep, and sunlight. My cares were relatively few even though I knew, clearly, that I was spending everything I had. Everything I had, and all I knew would be the price for that interlude.

It was a necessary break from reality. And it has held me up all this time. Vacations put off, down-time hardly known since...that year surrounds me in its quiet season. I long for it, that stillness of mind and spirit. And, if it cannot be had, perhaps just that small piece of it- that garden...a swing...a place to watch the sun rise. How many are left, after all? A generous count allows perhaps 14,000*. I need to remember that, in all my worries.

There is a smaller life, a simpler life possible. If I'm willing to let more things go...

*Thanks to Joannie who questioned my math.