I’ve been a daydreamer for as long as I can remember.

As a child, stories were always spinning through my head.

A child of the 70’s and 80’s, I spent a lot of time outside, by myself.

I was there in body, just like I was in elementary school, but my mind was often far away.

I can remember clearly traipsing through the neighborhood as a very small child, caught up in an adventure in my mind. So caught up one time that as I spun around, eyes closed and head back, caught in the moment, I was brought quickly back to reality as I ran, face first, into a swing set. Stunned, I felt the blood pouring from my nose. I went home, a stuttering sob erupting from my mouth.

I knocked on the screen door, and was told to stay out until lunchtime! This was the norm back then. Insistently, I kept banging. My exasperated mom answered the door, only to be horrified by what she saw.

Minutes later, cleaned up and encouraged I was okay, I went right back outside again.

Hours and hours of my childhood were spent laying on my back on the sweet, soft grass, staring at the clouds. I would see figures and animals and people in the ever moving sky. I spun stories out of silky cloud tendrils.

Early in my teenaged years, I’d lie in bed and transform my world. My room butted up next to a bank of iris blooms and lilac bushes, and I would open my window, even on the coldest nights in the Wasatch Front, just to smell the sweet blooms as I nodded off.

I’d pick up where I had left off the night before. My running story was of a secret world outside my window. It became a portal to another world, a world of sidewalks that opened up to hidden stairways to an underworld. I’d be walking along, carefree, and then the sidewalk would slide open, and I’d drop into the underworld. Dark, but not ominous. I’d spend time imagining how to get back.

Even now, and for the past decade at least, I daydream myself to sleep. I’ll imagine I’m in the crows nest of a great sailing vessel. Or on the deck of an ice cutter, shaving its way to the North Pole. The peaceful waves, or the movement and noise of the cutter, rock me to sleep.

I hope my daydreaming continues…and I’m grateful I wasn’t discouraged from doing it when I was growing up.