My sandbox was my whole world when I was four years old. It was where I felt the most myself. I played for hours every day, the warm sun tanning my skin. I loved the feel of the sand falling through my fingers and the sound it made as I sifted and shoveled. I added water to create sandy pies and cakes, with foliage as decoration. (I was only 4 so my product was pretty basic.) This was my little girl sanctuary where I went to relax, to create, and to process my day alone.
My life changed significantly when I was 3. Our family moved from tiny Kenedy, Texas, where I was born fearless and known by most of the community, to huge San Antonio, Texas, where I instantly became a shy child. My father left his job as a United Methodist Church minister and went back to school to become a social worker and therapist. My mom went to work full time. I began attending kindergarten for 4-year-olds in the mornings and spent the afternoons with a family friend until my mom picked me up after her work day as a teacher. Once home, I was off to my sandbox, settling into my little world of comfort and peace. I remember this as my daily routine.
A shy girl who just wanted to spend her life in her sandbox.
This was a lonely time for me. I had no neighborhood friends and my older siblings were not much interested in playing with me in my 4-year-old world. My sandbox was my best friend. And she was cute!
The whole family pitched in to build my sandbox. I remember my father putting it together: four wooden sides, four corner seats. Each of the four children painted and decorated one side of the sand box. My mom supervised the project. So even though I was alone in my sandbox, I was surrounded by the love and creativity of my family. Occasionally my brother would bring his toy soldiers and a bunch of water into my sandbox and mess up my little zen sand bakery vibe. This never ended well. But mostly, my sandbox was my happy place.
This was the basic design of my handmade sandbox.
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my childhood sandbox. My life has recently gone through another drastic change as I retired from teaching high school a year ago. It’s been a challenging year with family health issues and my thumb joint surgery. There have been some wonderful and amazing moments in the past year, but mostly I have felt lonely for my friends, but too depleted to reach out to them. I have felt stuck and stymied in my creativity and often joyless. I have been wishing for my old sandbox, a place to settle in and play, create, think, process, and relax.
So I decided to create this blog and invite my friends to come play with me here.
This is my grown-ass woman’s sandbox! Here I intend to explore, learn, write, create, and share my thoughts about topics that are near and dear to me and might interest you, like organizing, healing, traveling, books, growing older, becoming antiracist, life stories, and whatever else I’m pondering.
If you know me, you know I create a peaceful place and work hard to maintain that. You are welcome to hang out with me here as long as you’re not a jerk. 😀
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