someday i'll wish upon a star and wake up where the clouds are far behind me...

do you ever just wish you could go back?

i wish i just had one more day…one more day as that little blonde-headed 5 year old whose big blue eyes were full of nothing but sparkling daydreams of castles and candy canes and cotton-candy clouds and fairy godmothers and prince charmings and loudmouth animal friends who lived in the forest in lands far, far away.

i wish i had one more day to live in total and complete innocence. before i knew that the world was a cruel place and when i thought that people were just supposed to be good ‘because God said so’. before i knew that boys and girls were, in fact, very ‘different’ and before i understood the need for keeping their bathrooms separate. when i didn’t understand why momma couldn’t ‘just write a check’ when she told me that she didn’t have any money.

i want to go back to the days when i could sit under the tree in my grandma’s yard in nothing but my underwear and make mud pies for my family all day and when it got time to clean up and go inside, be perfectly content with just getting sprayed off with the waterhose…

when chasing bees on the playground was an acceptable pastime and kindergarten wedding ceremonies were a common occurrence.

i want to fight with my bubba over who is going to sit on daddy’s ‘window leg’ when we go somewhere and beg daddy to let us ‘bail out’ of the boat at the lake ~ oblivious to the fish and snakes and funk that is lurking beneath the surface.

i want to ride my bike down our gravel road at full speed and not care when i fall and skin my knees or if my pigtails get caught around the spokes. i want to drink coffee with my grandpa and his friends and pretend to understand what they are talking about. i want to spend hours outside running around with my cats and dogs and laying in the grass reading books and making daisy chains and picking roses from the rose garden and being completely filthy from head to toe when it’s time to come inside and throw a bossy little hissy fit when it’s time to wash and dry my nappy hair.

i just wish i had one more day to go back to those times because i remember being happy then. i remember feeling totally free and never worrying about anything. now, i just feel so…responsible. i wonder if i’ll ever feel that way again…happy and free with no strings attached? i know that girl is still in there…i still feel her sometimes…begging to be set free. what will it take for me to be content? and who is going to help me find that place again?