Inside a Garden

I still remember the first time I read Robert Louis Stevenson. We selected a poem of his, "The Swing," as my recitation piece for my first Language Arts Festival at school. I loved that poem. I would practice it at home so often that even my sister knew it by heart. A week after the Festival, I entered the school library with my class for story time. Before we left, I approached the librarian and asked her if the library had any books with poems like "The Swing." She smiled and took me to a stack of books and said, "Here is a garden of verses just for you."

I never forgot those words. She was, of course, referring to RLS's poetry book "A Child's Garden of Verses." I devoured it. To this day, RLS remains one of my favorite Scottish poets.  He is in my box of "World Treasures I Can't Wait to Share with My Kids" along with things like dandelions, tree climbing, pirate ship adventures, fishing with a cane pole, puppy breath, and growing vegetables.  Those verses echoed my first-grader imagination, thought for thought. I felt limitless whenever I lost myself in those verses. My creative world blossomed around me at the turn of a page, the memory of it still sends my heart soaring. 

We are building a little white picket fence. Yes, the story book kind. On one side will be our city and on the other will be my garden and all the imagination and flowers you could want. The boys will still be preschoolers when we move away from our little home. Which means that they will never be taller than our fence while they live here. Wonderful. Wonder-full. The garden I want to create will be a hedgerow of imagination. The border to some foreign land they can get lost in completely, I plan on joining them there. The whisper of the child I was growing louder with each hour that we lose ourselves inside the little fairy world of a garden. I leave you with one of my favorite verses:

To Any Reader

By Robert Louis Stevenson

As from the house your mother sees,

You playing round the garden trees,

So you may see, if you will look,

Through the windows of this book,

Another child, far, far away,

And in another garden play,

But do not think you can at all,

By knocking on the window, call

That child to hear you. He intent

Is all on his play-business bent.

He does not hear, he will not look,

Nor yet be lured out of this book,

For long ago, the truth to say, 

He has grown up and gone away,

And it is but a child of air,

That lingers in the garden there.