wild child running bare foot

i lived a childhood among the treetops and running barefoot with wolf packs of my own creation.

tucked in bed late at night, i watched the window and the shadows on the other side of the shutters and thought that, maybe, if i closed my eyes tight enough and wished hard enough...maybe peter pan would come.

i pet pencil to paper, wrote stories of fox of frogs and hedgehogs. they were carefree and wild; just as i wanted to be.

there were no problems back then. sweet childhood hid the ugliness of a world that was poised to hurt and damage tender souls as they pushed from their beds like bits of greenery from the earth.

 i did not wonder if i would end up alone; i had my storybooks, i had my stuffed animals that i pretended were orphans under my care, i had my bike which was, in my mind, a horse and i had myself and my family.
what else was there to want?

i did not play as a bride at a wedding. i played like a pioneer woman, alone in the prairie as she defended her homestead from wolves, indians and men (all of which were portrayed by my brothers).

i never could run very fast or very far but when your barefeet hit the warm summer ground, you can imagine that you run as a deer beside a rushing river.  feet turn to hooves, you form ears that dart at the slightest sound. you forget that you are a girl and not a wild animal.

i liked huckleberry finn better than i liked tom sawyer.  huck was wild and had adventures bigger and better than tom did, in my mind.  black beauty was the name of every single one of my fictional steeds and i yearned to bury my nose in the shimmering black coat of the horse that belonged in my heart as he did on pages as ink.

i was sensible. but deep in my soul, i knew that animals could talk. there was a secret language that only the very talent could hear. 

 childhood faded away and turned into a delicate in-between.  limbs grew gangly, wild turned to tears and confusion.  i stopped running barefoot. i stopped believing in peter pan. i stopped wishing for things i knew i could not have.

things not of this world were put in a box along with the toys and burnt-hemmed skirts i had outgrown.

i had my first crush; a boy whose younger sister was a friend. my reaction to these new feelings was to ignore him and pretend he did not exist; i panicked.
he is married now.
now i begin to wonder if i will be alone.
the prospect is not as cheery as it once seemed.
 
every child has a wild thing inside of it.
im glad that mine had a good run between wild blueberry bushes, pine straw forest floors and imaginary worlds where talking animals and peter pan were more than stories.