When I was 4, I used to walk around my little backyard in Mission Viejo, California, carrying a little woven basket and singing at the top of my lungs. If I could get my hands on our kitten, she would also be in the basket.
I would dance with an imaginary prince, squabble with my imaginary fairy guardians, and be surrounded by legions of imaginary, yet adoring, forest creatures.
When I was 4, I was also the oldest grandchild to my stately, poised, and formal grandparents.
Once my grandfather arrived at our house and found me in the backyard, mid-stroll through the forest, and called to me...
"Sara!"
*humph* I turned my head away.
"Sara?"
*Eye roll* I kept walking in the opposite direction.
"Sara!! Why didn't you answer me?"
I whirled around on my heals and declared in my sternest 4 year old voice,
"I AM NOT SARA! I AM AURORA!" I was indignant, I was incensed, I was infuriated. I spun back around and began a determined march to the far corner of the backyard.
How could he not see? I was clearly the cursed, yet noble, princess of all the land. His idiotic insistence that I admit to anything less was insulting. But he had broken my spell. The threads of imagination that I had woven around me were already unraveling, dissipating in the harsh light of reality. With bitterness, I watched my kingdom crumble around me.
Grandaddy was taken aback. No one had spoken to him like that in living memory. It is possible that no one has spoken to him like that ever since.
This story has gone down in family lore as a tale of naivete and spunk. Sort of the same way you'd laugh at a story about a kid who challenged a polar bear to a fight armed with nothing but a kitten in a basket.
"Is this kid insanely brave? Or just insane?"
I love that story, but for different reasons. For me it is a story about a time when I had the courage to create for myself the world that I wanted to live in. I knew who I was and the type of girl I wanted to be. And I was willing to stand up to anyone who wanted to label me as anything else.
So 30 years later, I'm looking for that little girl again. It's not that I haven't spent the last 30 years building a life that I love, or that I'm a wallflower and a doormat, because neither of those things are true. What I love about the 4 year old me most was the fearlessness, the unapologetic sincerity, and the immersive power of my imagination.
So welcome to "Call Me Aurora." It is a place where I will pursue truth, honesty, authenticity, and fearlessness. I hope that by so doing, I will contribute something to building a better world that we can all live in.
