Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/living-in-the-real-world-places-for-childhoods/5008621/
When I was a child, my brothers and sisters and I loved to visit my great aunt Meg - a tall, angular, elderly woman who is fixed in my memory as Babar's woman with the yellow hat. She would greet us at the door of her tiny Victorian house with the same words: "Come, children, we must find the fairies in the garden." Off we went to the small overgrown garden to find the fairies amidst the mushrooms and worms, lilies and lilacs. Each sparkle of dew was certainly a fairy, twinkling in and out of our lives with the power of van Goth's "Starry Night." Then we would wash off most of the mud and troop in for hot chocolate and stories on her velvet couch. We would be snuggled against the crook of her powdery arm, enveloped by the lemony smells of furniture polish, cats, and Aunt Meg (a scent of violet, cream, and an exotic smell we loved, later to discover it was the Ben-Gay ointment she used for her arthritis).Is there a more secure place to be than drinking hot chocolate in the arms of a loved one? This security ...