What's in a name?

In thinking about what to name this blog and the great portent of naming something, I immediately began to think of Jabberwocky*. I thought "Gyre & Gymbal" might be a great blog title...so I began perusing Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. I'd forgotten what a feast they are---chock full of wonderful nonsense phrases, poems, and ideas. "I must sugar my hair" seemed like a quite terrific title for a few moments. "Everything begins with M" was also another attractive thought. "12 Impossible things before Breakfast" was another blog title idea....but Jane Yolen has written a great short story/mini-biography with that title.

But while all of these are great phrases and favorite memories of mine, I decided to choose an idea that truly was my own...my favorite recurring childhood dream.

The dream began with the scary act of falling down my grandparents' stairs which had a menacing radiator** at the bottom. As I began to accelerate toward the radiator, I would suddenly remember how to fly. After some experimental zooming around the high ceiling dining room I'd zip out the casement windows for adventures.

What I remember the most is the actual moment my body would remember how to fly. It was very real physical and mental sensation. I've found it a few time in my waking life. I always felt it after completing the coveted job of Mrs. Shalit's classroom window closer (with the 3 minute before school dismissal prize) because I used my 3 minutes to get a running start across the playgrounds and through the woods to beat everyone else home. I also felt the flying feeling many times in during the high school cross-country and track seasons. It was a feeling of flying and joy. It is a time when my mind lets go and my body is open to the joy of the moment.

Peter Pan had been my favorite musical hero*** since I was about 4 years old. I used to spend my enforced nap time practicing flying (which involved dramatically falling off the bed, bookshelf and other objects) in my room. My mother could always tell when I was having a bout of flying practice because of the loud thumps. When life seemed particularly intolerable, I used to leave my window open a tiny crack so that Peter Pan could get in and we could fly away to Neverneverland. I didn't want to grow up and resisted it strongly until I realized that Peter Pan wasn't ever coming and that I, unfortunately, had to grow up.

In my current life, I'm often not open to the joy of the moment. Especially right now when I'm facing my very greatest fears on a daily basis to get ready for an adventure to the Antipodes: large stacks of important papers on horizontal surfaces and accumulations throughout the house. {Actually being in the middle of the ocean on a very small boat is my biggest irrational fear.} So those are some of my regular life fears...and having no idea what to create for dinner...especially as the boys grow hungrier and fiercer...!

Sometimes my fears turn out to be rather fascinating demons with useful insight. I do think that "important" paper is much like the Carolina cockroach...it seems to multiply and slide onto all sorts of surfaces. Really my desk was clean two days ago!! Ahhhhhhhh!



Fears aside, I'm naming this blog after the joyous feeling a mere dream used to give me. At the beginning of anything big, I usually have some type of fear to face down.

As I get ready for what I think might be a dream....perhaps if I write about life in this moment... I'll find that flying downstairs feeling...or perhaps I'll end up crashing into some radiators. This remains to be seen.

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The Footnotes
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*It's the only poem I can reliably recite, having decided to memorize it on a very long family car trip through England in 1977. The back seat of my dad's former student's european economy car was very cramped for us (13, 11 and 8 year old kids). I had to sit in the middle spot (between my siblings to keep them from annoying each other during the long drive). On a break between the first 3 Scarlet Pimpernel series, during my early stint as the backseat Berlin wall, I began consuming my brother's dragon book which included the poem Jabberwocky! Bored out of my mind, I decided to memorize the poem because it was the best thing I'd read that day.

**I have no memory except my mother's stories and the scars under my hair from the time I crashed into the radiator at the bottom of the stairs in the house of my early childhood. Box sledding down the stairs is not as safe as my three year old mind thought such an adventure ought to be.

***Because Mary Martin (the Broadway star) was completely amazing as Peter Pan...even though she was a grown up & a woman she could be a boy and fight pirates and FLY!! What is not to love in a hero like that? I later discovered that Eleanor Roosevelt, Helen Keller, Wilma Rudolph and Billy Jean King all had some of these great qualities...of doing generally impossible things.