Children’s Fantasy House

Backstory – Children’s Fantasy House

Today’s children don’t have the opportunities for imagining that we had fifty years ago.  I’ll bet you had a private clubhouse or tent or fantasy house to play in.  They were not plastic things you bought at Toys R Us.  Might have been the treasure of a big cardboard box with doors and windows cut out.  It could be any color and any purpose we wanted because it was created in our imagination.

I hope there are teachers and leaders out there who are creating platforms for imagination for today’s kids.  If you know of any, please let me know.

In the meantime, here are the details of the fantasy house of my childhood.

Children’s Fantasy House

We passed a grove of peach trees today. They reminded me of the fantasy house I had as a child. It was at the foot of a coal bank in Northeastern Pennsylvania, in a cluster of peach trees.

We lived in anthracite territory, and banks of coal were a regular part of the landscape. We would take rocks and outline rooms in our fantasy homes.  Under this tree was the living room. That tree covered the kitchen. If a tree was so low that you had to crawl under it, obviously, that had to be the bedroom.

Imaginations soared as my friends and I visited each other in our fantasy houses. The hours we spent designing the home we would have in the future. and the meals we’d serve.  The parties we’d give and the children we would have.

And then . . . the blink of the eye and voila . . . there we were in the real world with real husbands and kids and houses.

You might say we got the chance to make our house dreams come true. We certainly were good with colors and styles and we keep everything clean and perky.

But somehow no domicile was ever quite as sweet as my fantasy home under the peach trees at the foot of the coal bank in Hudson, Pennsylvania.

P.S  What fantasies did children conjure up during the pandemic lockdown?  It was a rare opportunity to return to the land of imagination. Did the time at home inspire innovation? Or was it spent as the open gate to limitless video gaming?  What have you seen, heard, or experienced?

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