Today’s Bloganuary prompt is: What was your favorite toy as a child?
The play I remember most as a child was imaginative and typically in nature. My imaginary friend, Drink, and I would roam the back yard and garden to play in the creek, a tree house, or other things we happened upon. A fallen log would become a whale or a fortress. A bit of moss would host a fairy garden. I loved feeling the wild directly, the cool water and mud squishing between my toes, earthy smells, chasing chickens, even eating wild plants (that my parents had taught me to identify) like violets or sour grass.
Because my imagination got so much practice in those days, I also loved books, especially being read to. I loved inhabiting worlds that I knew something similar, like Laura Ingles Wilder books, or E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Webb or Trumpet of the Swan, or those more remote like the Narnia series or Mary Poppins.
I certainly had many of the popular 1980’s toys. Dolls from Barbie to Cabbage Patch, Strawberry Shortcake, and a tote bag full of Care Bears. Ficher-Price, Legos, Mr. Potato Head, My Little Ponys, Voltron, and an A-team van. I’m glad that I had the toys of my time and I remember the colorful pieces of plastic fondly. It’s just nothing like the compelling memory of being close to the Earth, in tune with her cycles and wild ways.