My Connections to Play

“There is a garden in every childhood, an enchanted place where colors are brighter, the air softer, and the morning more fragrant than ever again.”

Elizabeth Lawrence quotes

“We plan our lives according to a dream that came to us in our childhood, and we find that life alters our plans. And yet, at the end, from a rare height, we also see that our dream was our fate. It's just that providence had other ideas as to how we would get there. Destiny plans a different route, or turns the dream around, as if it were a riddle, and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn't have expected.”

Ben Okri quotes (Nigerian author who uses magic realism to convey the social and political chaos in his country, 1959)

My Connections to Play

As I try to think of myself as a young child with no responsibilities and a relaxing atmosphere of my choice I catch myself going back to a place from my childhood it was an old lot with ( as I grew up in the city). This lot had a dirt mound, old big tree, broken glass from the winos’ across the street, some shrubs, lots of weeds and some grass. As I look at words this is no paradise, but I will spend hours from sun up t sun down here. My mom and grandma will give me old plastic margarine tubs. I will use glass carefully as my knives and I will cook and bake mud pies from sun up to sun down. My cousin penny will join me in our play. I spent many summer days picking ingredients, mixing my materials and pretending to be a baker.

My self guided play was encouraged by my mother and grandmother as they would encourage my imagination by providing me water and dishes to support my mud pie bakery. Even though they were supportive from time to time I would get in trouble for getting to dirty.

A short reflection on I feel play today is a little different from play I engaged in as a child. As a child I felt it was necessary to mix mud, cut weeds and use imagination. Disposal diapers once came in a large box and I would use that box as a Barbie house and I would sew scrap material together to make Barbie cloths. Children’s play today is different in regards to the materials they use are very realistic and readily available and imagination is slightly taken out of their play. We don’t have to pretend this is a camera here is a plastic camera.

My thoughts regarding the role of play throughout my life and in into adulthood as a reflection I can say my self guided play has shaped many of my adult interests. I love to bake in the fall and really all year I find it therapeutic. There is so much more to play than children dwindling away a day.