In my dreams...

I remember when I was a child. I used to watch The Waltons on Thursday nights and Little House on Monday nights...and on Saturdays it was Hee Haw and Fantasy Island.

Yeah, I did my share of fantasizing.

But, for as long as I can remember, (along with dreaming of being the first woman president and a country music singer...) I wanted to be a writer.

That's probably the one dream that stuck.

The fact that I never made any money off it don't matter, because all artists starve...right? Doesn't mean I don't have the talent or the potential...Just means the bird forgot how to fly.

Anyway, as I am sitting here watching old episodes of The Waltons and Little House, I realize that these two television series taught me so much growing up.

I wanted a family like theirs. Both of them. One that was supportive and encouraging. A family that believed in me as much as I believed in it. One I knew that no matter how far I wandered, I could always come home.

I guess that is why I loved my grandma and granddaddy Freeman's place so much. It's a place we all gravitated to. The land, the house my granddaddy built with his own two hands...it was as much family as they were. I mourn them as I think how they are all gone, in spite of my every attempt to not let it go.

I wanted to be a writer, though, because I realized at a young age, watching the stories that Laura Ingalls Wilder told and listening to the tales that John Boy wrote about, that writing was just an honest way of recording lives, whether they were real, lived, or just dreamed up. I could be anything I chose to be as long as I could write it down.

Maybe this is why these two television series' dug such a deep impression in my life.

Tonight, I watched Mary Ellen wish upon stars that she knew was long burned out, longing to chase dreams and have adventures, not realizing that everything she wanted was right there, where she could have it all. John Boy, I think, had already figured that out. And, once she stopped struggling, fate found her an opportunity to go get a taste of what she wanted.

My life is like that even now. Like John Boy, however, I am content to do what I can do in the now, where I am. I know that if the Good Lord wills it, one day, I'll go where He needs me to be. In the meantime, I am there.