I was going and I wasn't EVER coming back! I'd taken the abuse, the negligence, and the total lack of consideration for the last time. Conveniently, Shiney felt the same way. Best friends and kindred spirits through thick and thin, she was a party to the great injustice being doled out left, right and centre in our lives.
I packed my suitcase with all the necessities - the Barbie with articulated knees, and couple changes of clothes for her, maybe a sweater for myself. My favourite book. The afghan grandma had crocheted me. That bright, floral, cardboard valise was bursting with all the hopes, desires, and necessities of life.
My mother, enemy of the day that she was, packed some sort of a lunch. Likely a peanut butter and jam sandwich, maybe some GORP. A container of milk. A piece of fruit. Clearly she knew she was wrong and was trying to make it right. No doubt Shiney's mom had made cookies. But this wasn't going to be enough ... we'd have to figure out what else we'd need ... maybe in the afternoon.
Shiney and I met somewhere in the distance between her house next door and my garage. We were off and NEVER coming back. We went out the chain link gate of the housing compound we lived in - we'd so seldom been allowed out there without at least an older sibling. We rounded the corner, passed the rabbit hutch, skirted the creek, and hid ourselves away in the thicket immediately behind our houses.
Those moms, with all their rules and hard-nosed approaches to life, would never find us. How could they, with their missing senses of adventure, possibly know that if you pushed past those sharp green shoots of willow you found a heavenly circle, blanketed with blue bells. Silent.
 |
| 35ish years later, I still love running away with Shiney |
We read, and played with our dolls, and giggled. We ate our lunches, drank our milk, sucked the nectar out of the blue bells and napped.
Eventually one or another of our mom's called our shared name, and we went home for dinner. It's amazing what an hour or so of freedom can do. And a hungry stomach.
Whenever I want to run away, which is actually fairly often of late, that's the sun-dappled day I want. In quiet and comfort, with the necessities of life and the most perfect of companions.
____________________________
Scintilla Weekend Prompt:
Talk about a time when you left home
Ohhhh... I love this story. I remember a very similar one in my life.... and I love hearing you and Shiney are still actively running away from time to time!!
ReplyDeleteGlad to find you via #scintilla this morning!! (and we have enjoyed some of the same books! Always grateful to find a kindred!
Hi Julie - I felt the same thing reading your blog ... how parallel our stories sound. This is my favourite thing about projects such as Scintilla - as you say, finding a kindred.
DeleteLOVE. You've captured that feeling of childish injustice perfectly. I'd completely forgotten about sucking the nectar out of flowers. It was clover for me, rather than bluebells, because bluebells were harder to find in the UK when I was a child, but it always made me feel kind of magical, somehow, though. Like I was a fairy, only bigger.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely, Katja - I remember too thinking that the fairies must live on flower nectar and how that made us like the fairies. :D
DeleteI can just imagine our mothers sitting at home enjoying an afternoon of quiet while we were off in the forest imagining how worried they would be. :)
Omg I so love this! I remember feeling the EXACT same way as a child. Running away is always better when you have a partner in crime. :)
ReplyDelete