August 4, 2008
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Childhood Dreams
Overshadowing all my other childhood ambitions was the desire to grow up. I was about three years old when I overheard my mother telling my aunt that my doctors said I would not, because of my defective immune system, live long enough to grow up. I don’t know how much influence that knowledge had on the peculiar set of ambitions I formed, but I do know that it had a profound influence on my determination to do, and not just to dream. Knowing from the start that I was dying, as we all are from the day we are born, I took a lot more risks and attempted more challenges than I would have done otherwise.
The first childhood dream that I remember was to “be a mommie.” I have always mothered everything around, especially forlorn and defective critters and things, like the one-armed doll pictured here, Mary Lou, my favorite. My two oldest grandkids have kids of their own, and I have mothered broken birds, bummer lambs, other people’s kids, half a dozen husbands (my own, not other people’s), countless abandoned or neglected houseplants, and a temperate zone garden in a subarctic environment. Currently, I’m tending to the needs of Teddy, a tiny runty kitten who has failed to thrive.Check that one off.
Early on in childhood, I dreamed of being Lash Larue and a firefighter. I crossed those off my list relatively early on, too.
The first time I saw flamenco, I decided I wanted to be a dancer. I danced as long as I could and have not given up the desire and intention to dance again if it ever becomes feasible. I bob around and “dance” as I sit here, whenever some catchy music comes on. I tried flamenco, and Irish folk dance, square dance, swing, tango, waltz, charleston, frug, hokey pokey, polka, twist, dirty dog, pony, bop, hip hop, and probably more that don’t immediately come to mind. My favorite dance is a freeform floating thing like Isadora Duncan did, but with a tambourine, my instrument.
I went pro for a few years in the 1960s and ‘seventies, as a go go dancer.
Check that one off.
Following some of my dreams precluded following some others. My seventeen (so far) descendants in three generations may or may not be glad that I decided not to become a medical researcher, astronaut or mountain climber, or any other ideas I crossed off the list in favor of indulging my biological urges. I flitted from one ambition to another, and I’m sure there are some I don’t recall. For a few years after watching the filming of a movie, I wanted to be a movie star. I’m glad that one didn’t work out.
Farming, exploring, photography, travel, cooking, writing, healing, and learning as much as I can, are some of things I dreamed of doing when I was a child, that I have accomplished or (in the case of learning up to capacity) am still working on. Check, check, check….
This is my answer to the latest Featured Grownups Challenge, with these guidelines: “WHAT WERE YOUR CHILDHOOD DREAMS and which ones have you lived?
If you knew you were dying – which ones WOULD you live?“
Comments (23)
what an enriching journey!
You are a source of inspiration just by being yourself!
I think as you age you can change what dreams you have as you grow as a person…
I also had a dream when I was young. I dreamed to be a teacher, to teach my students well. Now my dream has come true. Hope that my students can feel that I teach them well.
LINKED
Most of my dreams have come true, in one form or another. Others didn’t and can’t. Such is life.
That question actually became pertinent to me at one point, or so I thought. I’d like to see Egypt and Israel, just to touch those ancient stones. I want a cruise down the Nile river. I enjoyed your post.
Wow.
It sounds like you are having an amazingly full life.
I don’t know what a “Lash Larue” is………..
I would live no other dream but to spend every single minute I could with my little boy.
He’s the best dream of all……
Childhood dreams… let’s see… I was into firearms, warfare and the military from a very young age. I always used to play with toy guns. Very much a ‘leader’ type back then too, but I mellowed out.
I also had an obsession with digging holes. To this day, I get a pleasure out of it that other people don’t. Makes for great exercise.
As for which ones I’d live, well I’m probably a bit weird, but I would willingly trade places with an NCO/sargent-type, or a senior officer from WW1 or 2 if time travel were possible. Even a regular soldier would do. And any war, really – pre-industrialized wars especially; the days of spears, arrows and swords. Maybe Napoleonic stuff. It just feels strangely natural to me. Death, frostbite, disease, hunger… I can accept that. Military strategy (including field tactics) also interests me greatly. Modern warfare I don’t like so much. I have no romanticized notions about war, if that’s what anyone is thinking.
I wanted to be an entimologist until i found out that I could only make a living killing bugs. You gotta post some gogo photos. You just have to…
I think my nephew was born wanting to be grown up… and now he almost is. Funny how that happens.
to be PROUD to be a woman. My mom cried when I was born, she told me. She wanted a boy. She thought women were always going to be treated badly and she pitied me. I am glad and now proud to be an adored and respected wife, mother and WOMAN! Glad to be feminine with all it’s charms. I never wanted to have P-envy for one minute that was my life long wish. To be happy with who I am.
BTW I loved your post.
They thought you would die young and now you have great grand kids…you have a blessed life!
@Over_my_coffee_cup - The best thing that ever happened to me was being faced with death at an early age. Parents do their kids a disservice when they shelter them from the reality of mortality.
@Ikwa - My father wanted a boy. My mother just wanted a baby to fulfill that biological imperative. My father made the best of the situation by treating me like a boy, which I think worked to my advantage because it has given me the best of both worlds. Being okay with ourselves is the important thing, I think.
@warweasel - @fairydragonstar - Yes. Flexibility, the willingness to change course and alter programs, is more conducive to growth than just wistfully hanging onto old dreams. Some childish fantasies are not worth acting out.
@Old_Man_Mike - There are no pictures of me as a go go dancer, but I’ll paint you a couple of word pictures. In California, I was only required to cover my genitalia. I usually wore a blue and green paisley bikini bottom — and white go go boots, of course.
Later, in Oklahoma City, I had to cover my nipples, too. In a new town, clueless where to buy pasties, I went to a craft store and got a long string of small plastic pearls, from which I fashioned two heart-shaped glittery things. I found a costume shop for a tube of spirit gum to stick them on with. No white boots, there, and I wore a variety of bottoms. At first, I wore silver spike heel sandals with thin straps that criss-crossed over my calves. Dancing in them hurt my feet, and after I hurt one of the drunks who was reaching up to grope me on stage, with my heel in his chest, I switched to knee-high fringed moccasins. The bar patrons there were mostly Indian oil field workers, and they liked the moccasins.
BTW, my favorite song to dance to was Led Zep’s Black Dog.
Like you, I changed some of my plans and ambitions when I realized what would have been involved.
@Apocatastasis - …sounds like warrior karma to me.
@spinksy - Lash Larue was a movie hero, a sexy man in black with a 15-foot bullwhip. There was none of that shooting the gun out of the bad guy’s hand for him, the way Lone Ranger did it. He used the whip to disarm them. There’s an old movie trailer of him on youtube.
@SuSu - I think a father’s greatest gift to a daughter is to treat her as he would a son….but then my dad doesn’t know how to be any other way with woman…it was the legacy his Maternal Great Grandfather gave the family///he sent my Great Grand Mother to collage he gave his boys farms
Hello Ms. Kathy,
You worked hard to make your site so simple yet elegant. I see that you have a wide variety of interests and observations here!
I’m sending an important message to people about God’s plans for us that is in the Bible: 44 “And in the days of those kingsthe God of heaven will set upa kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever.” (Daniel 2:44) (ESV)
This was so inspiring to read! I admit that I think I got a tear in my left eye after I finished it. You’ve overcome so much and you’re still here. To me it sounds like you’ve made yourself a pretty good life, and I’m glad to have read this because I’ve been doubting some on my choices these last few days, and now I feel strangely confident that everything will work out!
Thank you!
@SuSu - Could be. Could be a lot of things, really. If it is, it’d probably be “warrior karma” accumulated over a series of lifetimes rather than just one. A fascinating thought.
I tend not to factor karma into anything, because like most people, I have very little understanding or awareness of it. I don’t even know if karma is a part of our universe.
During the first two years of my induction to the education system, I was known as the “daydreamer”, because I often zoned out and went to other places. Memories of events that happened hundreds of years ago are likely to be foggy, and I’m not sure whether I could distinguish past life memories from an active imagination and a knack for visualization.
Oh my God, what a cute picture. I loved that one. Kathy whenever I think of you, which is everyday, I always think of a line from the movie Second Hand Lions. In the movie his two elderly uncles die trying to fly a bi-plane through a barn upside down. These two old geezers had lived extraordinary lives and hid a fortune in their barn.
The boy goes to live with them because his mother is less than stable and grows to love and admire them very much. When the boy was asked about their lives in the end, he could only make the statement, “They really lived, they really lived.” Wow, that’s how I think of you. Few people, from my viewpoint, have ever warranted the description of extraordinary. But you are one of them.
Chow, magdalenamama
@magdalenamama - Awww, thanks, my friend. I wish that living, really living, was ordinary. Everybody deserves to really live.
I second Magdalenamama’s comment about Secondhand Lions—-you live, you really live….
I find your posts amazing to read.
Take care!
Dessa
Hi!
Thank you for sharing!
I hope you keep checking all your dreams! =)
Isabel