Fairy Elfkindale

Wow. In one month, I'll have a married daughter and a son in-law. From my perspective, not long ago, Elizabeth spent hours playing with her dolls and imagined and created a whole kingdom in "Fairy Elfkendale" with her sister, brothers and friends. Fairy Elfinkindale is a little piece of forest down a hill on the westside of our house. This forest epitomizes my children's childhood. They each have looked at it as a very sad day when they grew too old to play and imagine there with the same gusto. In fact, my friend Suzanne Forkey wrote me not too long ago, reminiscing about this little forest and reflecting on Elizabeth's marriage and her own children growing up and what great memories her children have of spending hours in Fairy Elfkindale.

Elizabeth christened it Fairy Elfkindale and with Jessica created it into an entirely different world where all who entered there became a fairy. Anyone who wanted to play was given a fairy name and a piece of land to build their own home. There was a town square, a small lake and each fairy had their own purpose or profession. Elizabeth or Jessica gave romantic sounding names to all places in this land. I'll have to ask them the names of the town square and the other places. All the homes were built out of ferns, branches, moss or tree boughs. Depending on how many visitors we'd have in a summer, there could be up to twelve little fairy homes as well as the town square area.

When I consider how many children spend hours glued to a video game or television, I'm saddened by how much of their childhood has been lost and will soon be gone. Will they have learned to create, imagine and feel the complete joy that is childhood? It's interesting that every child who visited our house and played in Fairy Elfkindale will say to me or one of my children, "Remember Fairy Elfkindale? That was so much fun." Some of these now adults or near adults maybe only came over one time, but that memory is still so alive with them.

Over the last few years, Fairy Elfkindale has been rather quite and forlorn but one day, Elizabeth, Jessica, Ian and Erik will introduce their children to their childhood world and hopefully these children will have the eyes to see the wonder of this magical forest.

something from Ian

Jessica is home and she sleeps all the time. It's good to have her back after not seeing her for months. It's also good to have another woman in the house to balance things out. Erik and I can't wait for school to end.