The other morning, Samuel and Lucy wanted me to play 'tornadoes' with them. I asked my usual questions to invite myself into their world. "Okay, so who am I?" "Who are you?" "What can we do?" "Where are we?"...I keep asking these questions throughout when I am lost and have no idea what we are doing (they always know what is happening but I don't - makes me think they feel this way about real life sometimes - a world they are learning but still have to listen to the narrator to figure out)
I was the Mama tornado, Lucy was the girl tornado and Samuel was the pet tornado. We ran out of things to do as tornadoes - the usual, eating, destroying things, napping, raining, blowing. So, Samuel decided we should be tornado super heroes. Lucy and I were Tornado Super Hero girl and Super Hero Mama. We could shoot tornadoes out of our hands and our mouths to capture bad guys. Samuel was the Tornado pet Penguin. He could shoot out loud penguin squacks that were so loud they would scare people away. The children could have been in this world for hours but I find it hard to keep it up more than 15 - 20 minutes. I had a great time playing with them...later we were Tigers, dogs, and gardeners. I love seeing their enjoyment in creating stories - that is what make-believe is and I want to foster this as long as I can.
Sometimes I wonder what happens to our imaginations? My children can play for much longer periods at make-believe than I can. I know this is true for most people - why? Is it a good thing? Are our imaginations just shaped more by reality or is there some deeper disappointment and lack of hope in our older imaginations? Just wondering if the loss of imagination as we grow older is good...necessary...inevitable...or worth fighting against.......I'm thinking the latter.
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