Dreams are lovely, but they are just dreams, fleeting ephemeral, pretty. Dreams do not come true just because you dream them. It’s hard work that makes things happen. It’s hard work that creates change. —-Shonda Rhimes

I had so many dreams as a young girl. I used playtime to pretend that I had actually reached the many goals that rattled around in my head. It took a bit of time for me to make any of them come true, but I have to admit that it was fun thinking about possibilities. 

For a time I played with my Madame Alexander doll along with my neighborhood friend, Candy. We used boxes and scraps of cloth to create what we called the New York City apartment for our miniature women. She was a bit more modern than I was because she actually had a Barbie doll which she insisted had been named after her older sister. Indeed her sibling was beautiful like Barbie so I had no difficulty believing that her story was quite true. Anyway our dolls, Suzette and Barbie, lived in the world that we created and it was lovely. They were airline stewardesses who travelled the world when they were not enjoying the scene in the Big Apple. 

I suppose that there were moments when I actually imagined myself wearing one of the cute uniforms of the hostesses of the day. It sounded like an exciting lifestyle even though I had not once flown in the sky myself. Like so many fantasies it was fleeting and soon I saw myself as a teacher instead. 

I often had a difficult time enticing other kids to become my students. After all we already went to school five days a week from September to the end of May. Doing pretend homework wasn’t exactly the fun time for them that I believed it was. Still, I always managed to find takers on whom I would use the books and already prepared quizzes and tests that I kept in a cardboard box filled with school supplies. I even had report cards that I thought very much resembled the real thing. At the time I played at being an educator I never totally imagined that one day I would indeed fulfill that goal. 

I suppose at the top of my list of potentials careers was working as a writer for a newspaper. I often gathered my cousins or the neighborhood children and interviewed them. I had a little spiral notebook in which I took notes of things happening on my street. Because I did not have access to a camera I illustrated the pages of my paper with drawings of the events or people who seemed to be the most important. I used blank typing paper for each page and put stories in columns with eye catching headlines. I included opinion pieces and comic strips and even advice on how to do certain things. There was a sports page featuring the locals who played football or baseball or who ran up and down the street. I believed that my little creation was wonderful and even duplicated each issue so that I might sell my news for a dime. I imagined that one day people across the the world would read my stories and that surely there would be some prizes for my efforts. 

As my interests waxed and waned there would be so many lifestyles that I imagined for myself. Perhaps I would be a renowned actress or a model whose face would appear on billboards. Maybe I would become a nurse or maybe a detective like Nancy Drew. I occurred to me that being an architect like my neighbor, Mrs.Wright, might be fun although I did not totally understand what she did. I only knew how happy she appeared to be doing her work. There was always the possibility that I might find a Prince Charming just like in the fairytales and live happily ever after being a wife and a mother. I didn’t know any women back then who were lawyers or doctors or engineers, so somehow such professions never occurred to me. Besides, I’ve always had a distinctly creative bent that is more artsy than scientific. 

When It finally came time to go to college and declare a major I was baffled as to what I actually wanted to be. The dreams of my youth were fuzzy and undefined. I must have changed my major five or six times before I finally settled on earning a degree in education with a major in English and a minor in mathematics. I suppose I wanted to be much like my favorite English teacher who was so inspirational that he remains my all time favorite teacher to this very day. Still, in the back of my mind I had a secret longing to be like the editor of The Daily Cougar, Edith Bell, who wrote so magnificently about student life. By then I had become rather practical, thinking that I probably wasn’t as good at stringing words together as I needed to be to make a career in writing a reality. 

As things worked out I was asked to use my knowledge of mathematics on my very first teaching assignment and from that moment forward that is what I taught. The idea of writing faded but never went away. My schedule was so busy that I did little of it, but I always grabbed the opportunity of writing a school newsletter or sponsoring students who wanted to create a newspaper. I devoted my life to my family and to my job, working hard on each thing I did and hoping that somehow I was making a difference. 

It all went by so quickly. One day I woke up and knew that it was time to retire from my full time work as an educator. My daughters were grown and gone. All of the things that had demanded my time once again seemed only like a dream I had no idea what to do with myself, so I began writing again and feeling wonderful that I finally had to time to put my stories and thoughts into words. I’ve been joyfully blogging for around twelve years now. I have written a book that I still don’t quite know how to launch. I teach math a few times each week and have a new generation of students. My heart is full because I seem to be making things happen and creating change. I suppose that is what each of long to do with our time here on this earth. My work was hard but always fulfilling. Who knows. Maybe one day I’ll write something that is so profound that it will launch a new chapter of my existence. That would surely be a dream come true.