I had a lovely aunt that had a fanciful imagination as well. Aunt Helen could draw most anyone into a realm of wonderment! I recall that as a child I truly believed in faeries after spending a bit of time with her. Her soft spoken tales of faraway lands, quaint villages and adventurous escapades brought me into a different world. There I could escape the chores of farm life and be whatever my imagination could dream! One of my favorite things to do with Aunt Helen was to create "Faerie Houses" and "Faerie Gardens". Here the faeries would dance the night away to the sounds of the cricket chirps which were magically turned into beautiful music! Their gossamer wings would flit through the air and their happy laughter would fill the night! The gardens were made in some out-of-the-way nook where soft mosses and tiny mushrooms grew. Everyone who was anyone in the Faerie World knew that mushrooms and moss were required in the gardens. Aunt Helen and I would collect pretty stones, bright colored leaves and other lovely accessories for these gardens. Then the decorating of the area began! As we beautified our "garden" or made the "house", she would tell a most magical tale of faerie princesses and handsome suitors! I know that I was not the only little girl that shared this special time with Aunt Helen but in my young mind, she was mine..all mine!
This lady sparked an active imagination inside of me. She let me know that it was ok to have a dream world where I could escape and live out exciting tales that only existed in my mind! My faerie princesses could dance in magic slippers, my heroic princes could battle evil ogres and dragons were always nice! Aunt Helen...I miss you! I miss our times together but the imagination never left me. Those Faerie Houses and Faerie Gardens are just waiting to be rediscovered and the intrigue is waiting to be passed on to another generation. Some day...some day.
A tuft of soft, green fairy moss and a few toadstools were all it took to set the stage for fairies and elves to enjoy a night of merrymaking and dancing. Bracelet settees set round about, and bead lamps, provided resting spots for fairy children. Outlying patches of fairy moss, wild and unadorned amidst the roots of an ancient, sprawling oak tree transport bare feet round the sweep of the gnarled trunk to a rock garden whose "flat, round rocks" offer a warming foot-massage, all the while conveying the wide-eyed wanderer toward a well-lit, miniature pagoda strategically set as a jewel amongst the deep green foliage of spidery azaleas. The light faintly reaches the back wall of the bamboo fence...a corner, a latch, a tall gate! The latch lifted, the squeaking of the hinges gives way to the soothing sounds of water trickling into a tall, gravel-filled, stone splash basin -- a shaded spot for thirsty hummingbirds and dragonflies to pause and refresh themselves. There, two little girls timidly discover for the first time how much in common they do share in their dear and much-beloved aunts. Shyness dispelled, the cousins devote themselves in earnest to the pleasant busyness that, like gardening, true imagination demands!
ReplyDeleteAhhhh..you have inherited your dear mother's talent for keeping me spellbound with mere words! Kindred spirits, we two! How delightfully wonderful!
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