Speaking of infra-red and ultra-violet, as I was on Monday, made me remember this greeting card from ten years ago, for I used the same violet with that same spark of red in the book cover. I made the boat out of the starry night and set it in yet another night sky with three white-paper stars. Then I set a lady in the boat reading a book of dreams to illustrate one of my favorite nursery rhymes:
Row, row, row your boat,
gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily,
life is but a dream.
The older I get, the more I find that I need to take this message to heart. This seems like such a lighthearted child's rhyme, but it is as deep as Shakespeare's "We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep."
My little ice skater is full of worries, trying to find her way in the world, at the beginning of the dream. These two pieces of mine, the rowboat and the ice skater, take me back, back, back to my childhood, when I was nine years old for about nine years running.
I grew up in the most wonderful place. (Let's just say that the childhood was complicated, but the place was wonderful.) There is a lake in the middle of Dallas called White Rock Lake. There are mansions that overlook this lake. And then there is a tiny little neighborhood of tiny little houses that also overlook this lake, and that is where I grew up.
The only thing between my back door and the lake was a park and the lake road. The whole park was my backyard. I did not really grow up in Dallas, I grew up in White Rock Lake Park.
And the only rule was that we were never ever to cross the lake road. The lake was on the other side of this road, a lake in which we would surely drown if we went anywhere near it.
I am sorry to tell you that my brothers and sister and I went across that road too many times to count, for we were made of dreams.
There were piers that went straight out into the lake, where men were often fishing. But sometimes a pier was empty, and we walked right out to the end of it. The piers smelled of fish, and there was a pinging noise from ropes tied to buoys, and there was the slapping of the water against the pilings.
There were boats everywhere, sailboats in boat docks, small rowboats tied up beneath the piers, and yet other boats pulled up on dry land, abandoned or just waiting. And across the lake was the skyline of downtown Dallas, looking like some mythical, faraway place.
Oh, the sense of adventure, the pure essence of adventure! Huckleberry Finn, Robinson Crusoe, The Swiss Family Robinson, Tarzan, The Lone Ranger. It was all there for the taking.
Every now and then my little brother or my little sister would get lost, and everyone's first thought was "Oh, no! The lake!" Our mother would send my older brother and me to the park to find the missing sibling, and we would run as if a life hung in the balance, down to the lake road, calling and calling.
Nothing was more exciting than a lost child!
The lake was such a fearsome place, the universe was so "wonderfully and fearfully" large, the chances of finding a little brother or a little sister were so infinitesimally small. Might as well try to find a star in the starry heavens!
Sometimes the fire department came to search, too. Once we found my little brother down inside a neighbor's post hole, a huge hole that had been dug for a post for their new blockade-type fence, which was being built to keep children out. Once we finally found my sister fast asleep in our very own living room, hidden from view under a blanket.
No child that I know of was ever lost in the lake, it was only when we grew up that we really and truly got ourselves lost.
This is the fabric that I used for the lady's dress in my boat card. I made a tracing of her skirt and her sleeve and went roving over this fabric, looking for only the purple and the green bits. But I rather like the whole effect of this "beginning of the universe" pattern.
I find I am able to see my childhood in this colorful, kaleidoscopic way, even though I know there was another reality at home.
I lived in my dreams growing up. I brought the laundry in when I came home from school, set the table for dinner, did all the dishes. Those were my chores, and basically I daydreamed my way through them. Then the rest of my time was spent in the park (before dark), and doing my homework, writing, and reading (after dark).
I went to bed every night with a flashlight and a book.
But I'm trying to think of where I am now with all this rowing and dreaming, and I find that I don't really know. I'm a little adrift. I'm very much like this lady with her book of dreams drifting about in her starry boat.
A boat with no paddles, I see.
Oh, could that be the problem?? For I do feel as if once again I have wandered across that forbidden lake road and walked right out to the end of the pier, where I find myself, all wonderfully and fearfully made, wondering, "What next? What next?"
My footsteps make the tiniest patter amidst the pinging of the buoys and the slapping of the water. Ping! Slap! Pitter-patter! I seem to have untied one of those boats and taken it out on high water. And I don't have a paddle, I don't know where in the world I am going. But I am still dreaming, still wishing on stars, and that, surely, is a good sign!
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