Peter Pan and Wendy

When I was little, I lived pretty much alone with my mom.  My sisters all got married the year I was 8, so I spent a lot of time alone.  I read books most of the time, because television wasn't all that great and I listened to the stories on the radio.I was kind of a daydreamer.

Our next-door neighbor kept an eye on me, although I was never told she was babysitting.  I had a key to the side door and would come home from school, change my clothes in the service porch area and go next door for lunch.  It was a favorite place for me to go.  My best friend Becky was there.  She went to Christian school, so we only saw each other in the afternoons and on weekends.  Their house had a turret above the front door and although I never got to climb around in there, my thoughts were there a lot.  I was Rapunzel.  It was the best time of my life. 

My bedroom windows opened to the side where Becky's house was and I would invite her in to "help" me clean my room.  Cleaning was never my strong suit, being the baby and spoiled and all.  The deal was, Becky would clean my room for me and I would make her a butter and sugar sandwich.  Mine would be butter only.  We called each other "Butterball and Sugarball"  I was a skinny little thing, mostly tomboy.  She was a bit heavier and all girl.

After the room was clean we'd play our favorite game.  It was "Peter Pan"  I would be Peter Pan and she would be Wendy.  We'd climb into the linen closet in the hallway between the bedrooms.  I would get on the top shelf and Becky on the middle or bottom.  Below us were drawers we used to climb to our goal.  With the doors closed, the adventure could begin.  We would fly and go places that could never be imagined in the light.  We saw gardens with myriad flowers, stars so bright and silver, black sky, blue sea and city lights galore.  It was a wonderful time.  A few times, we fell asleep there in the closet.  The first time, our mothers were frantic.  The looked in the walnut tree in the back yard, both family's guest houses, my favorite wall, in the hedge and under the piano at Becky's.  Their girls were gone!  They called our names, but we slept and dreamt of Never-Never Land, oblivious to their concern.  Eventually, my mother remembered she had seen us once climb out of the linen closet and opened the doors.

There, like the babes we were, slept Peter Pan and Wendy.  The wakened us and asked us not to play there again.  Told us how worried they had been.  We couldn't obey.  It was our very favorite place.  Magical, actually.  A place of dreams and flight only imagined by a child.