Where are the simple joys

Be yourself they said.

But don't do this.

Or that.

Don't cry, or be nosy, or impolite, or too loud. Speak up. Sing out. Don't get in the way or bother anyone.

By the time I was finished and sent out into the world to meet my fate I had no idea who I was.

I tried polishing up the edges of that person in the mirror, but I was never really sure if I was becoming more me, or if I were just someone else's art work in progress.

I am coming up on twenty years of cohabitating with myself.

I pop up now and then on long lonely mornings, or walks around the park. I appear in the library like a ghost returning to its old haunting grounds. I even heard myself singing the other day as I played with my favorite things.

Not raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens, but dollhouses and wallpaper and typewritten stories..

I used to run to the telephone when my Daddy called and it was the highlight of my three year old day. Now I do the same thing, but it is  Bobby and Bestest.

No longer obsessed with finding the simple joys of maidenhood and all those adoring daring fables, I am beginning to look a lot like me!