Circle of Life, Part 2

Sorry for the cheesy heading, but in this case it's really apropos. My Aunt Nancy held a baby shower for me this weekend in Rhode Island, in the house next door to the one I grew up in. Her very same living room was also the site of my mom's own baby shower (for my younger brother Jay) 32 years ago. There were probably a half dozen guests at my shower who were also at my mom's shower, as was I, at 3 years old. How cool is that?
At least three of the women pictured above were at my mom's baby shower 32 years ago.

The shower was especially poignant for me because the neighborhood I grew up in has had such a deep influence on my sensibilities as I've grown from child to teenager to adult. When my parents divorced while I was in college and later decided to sell the house while I was living in San Francisco, I was heartbroken. I'd always imagined getting married there. There was a long expanse of grass with a canopy of trees that led down to the waterfront, and I pictured myself walking through the trees as if they were a church aisle, then standing at the concrete pier with my beloved and the sun setting behind me as the ceremony was performed. Alas, the house was sold, the land parceled off and built on, and the trees cut down.
A Google maps screenshot of the old neighborhood. The house in the top center of the photo is my Aunt Nancy's; the house on the far right is the one I grew up in. Laura Lane, named after my dad's mom, leads right down to a small rocky beach we swam and sailed from.

But to be able to return to the same special spot for my baby shower was just as wonderful. My cousin's girlfriend, Kate, who drove down from Boston for the shower (with my cousin Emily, of course) recognized what a special place it was right away, and I told her the story of how, at age 13, I pretended to be a mermaid swimming in the water for Emily, then aged 3. Emily was too smart to fall for it, and I remember feeling disappointed that she hadn't fallen under the same imaginary spell I was under.

A recent article in the New York Times magazine about whether kids have enough free time for unstructured play in this day and age makes me wonder if my own daughter will have the same luxury of time and resources that I did to let her mind grow with her own unsupervised, undirected thoughts. I want her to learn piano, and take dance lessons, or even play soccer
if that's what she's interested in. But I don't want her to be denied the free time to imagine herself in worlds other than the real one we're all so cruelly thrust into, whether we want to be or not.