A Real Fantasy With My Daughter About Imagination

“I’m bored. So bored. I’m going to die of boredation,” she said in her bed. All the birds, perturbed and concerned, stopped singing.

A door’s slow creak gained in momentum and slammed.

Not a door in the house nor a door in my head, but rather a door between worlds. The kind of door that, when open, confuses things with the clarity of some largeness that confounds. Do you follow? Please do. Come along and don’t worry. We’ll leave a trail of breadcrumbs or popcorn or pearls.

A big orange flower, not yet wilted, is drooping. The dream animals, lost in the desert, are dying of thirst. My little girl is bored. She dangles precariously on the precipice of a reified world of inanimate, impersonal matter.

“Want some candy?” I ask her and hand her a red and white lollipop. There isn’t much time. I check my watch but it’s not on my wrist. No matter. To hell with chronology.

“There’s always time. No rush. No rush,” the turtle mumbles in a slow deep voice as he lumbers lumberingly through the door. “Climb aboard.” We hop on the turtle’s shell, a maze of yellow and brown wherein it’s easy to get lost. We don’t know where we’re going. Nobody does.

I remember you, Lola Blue, on your stomach, straining the just barely able muscles in your neck to lift your wobbly head. I marveled at how you were able, already, to focus and direct all your baby energies into one concentrated act. And why? Why did you so tenaciously will your head off the pillow?

To see. Driven only by the wonder and thrill of the ability to see and all that might be seen.

“Look! It’s raining lemon drops and gummy bears from pink and blue clouds of cotton candy!” she screams, and the turtle sighs. Taking cover, slowly, he heads toward a cave on the side of a mountain as Lola catches candy on her tongue.

The mountain, to put things in perspective, is actually an irritated blemish on the back of a Cosmic Yellow Dog who is said to devour each moment in his voracious maw. It is not known if the Cosmic Yellow Dog is God’s tame pet or if he is wild and incorrigible.

Inside the mountain, the turtle, whose name was Martin, was soon gone. We found ourselves on a playground upon which a gentle snow fell. Lola listened as I stood atop the tall red slide and recited Dylan Thomas. “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower / Drives my green age.” The poetry made us feel weird, like we were dreaming, enchanted by the spell of some rhythmic witch.

“Daddy,” she said, “This isn’t real, is it?” The snow turned to tiny pink and yellow flowers that fell in slow motion, twirling humbly to the earth. I felt empty with longing. I wanted to argue about truth and beauty and justice with ancient Greek philosophers. I wanted to keep the door open and stoke the fire.

“Of course it’s real, little girl,” I replied and did a cartwheel.

“But none of this is happening. Not really. Not even this conversation. It’s make believe.”

“But, baby, here we are, you and me—talking.”

“No, Daddy. Not really.” She shook her head but her eyes were wide with hoping.

“Then why do you keep answering me?”

The question caught her off guard and she thought about it. She shook tiny flowers from her yellow hair and thought some more before saying the magic words: “I don’t know.” A choir began to sing. All the prisoners escaped from jail. Reunited lovers embraced and kissed, celebrating ignorance.

“We are strange and mysterious creatures, little girl,” I lectured. “Thrown into the world against our wills—here—there is so much to see and eat and dream. There’s no time. No time for boredom. Boredom begins where your imagination ends. There are too many books to read to possibly be bored. Too much music. Too many poems. Too many worlds waiting to be born, waiting to happen, waiting for you.”

As she became interested in her boredom, the door creaked open. Inside her clenched fist she found a magic silver key. “It’s the secret,” she said, “the secret to everything.” And, without hesitation, she gave it to you.

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