Member-only story
A story of the mom who didn’t have to be
I began having dreams of escaping when I was twelve years old. Not the kind that involves packing a bag and marching to the end of the block before turning around. I had a dream about vanishing. of taking off.
At night, I would drift across the grassy hill in the backyard after releasing my feet from the solid earth. I cherished the liminal state of semi-consciousness. The liberty that comes with lucid dreams.
By creating the beautiful landscape of my mind, I managed to survive my childhood and especially my adolescence. When the noise of my home became too much, I would retreat to the place where there was only space for me.
I created my future home in my safe haven, finding comfort in every little detail. I thought about what I could grow in my garden while gathering paint chips from Home Depot. Time seemed to drag on forever, but I took solace in the life I intended to create.
I don’t know how it could have been any other way, but in retrospect, I find my high school years’ naivete to be funny. Adolescent idealism was stronger than even the fear that came to my house much too frequently when I was a child.
Too young to be cynical is seventeen.
I was finally in a position to leave the frying pan of my childhood home at the age of eighteen and enter what I thought would be a temperate mixture of extinguishable fires. I knew…
