Blue-sky-thinking
The sky was the limit for a kid like me, growing up in the middle of the prairies.
Sunflowers and Blue-Sky-Thinking, Manitoba, Canada
Growing up in the prairies, where the sky was my playground, my daydreams and ideas could shift and change just like the flowers and elephants and mythical creatures in the ever-changing clouds above me. Back then, I felt equally free to explore new territory in my fantasy world as in the real world. I did a lot of things that no one else did in my tiny town of 400 people: I played the violin; I recited poetry at competitions in both English and German; when it came time to choose a band instrument, I didn’t play the clarinet or the saxophone like everyone else. Nope, it was the French Horn for me!
Perhaps these were somewhat unconventional interests for a girl from a rural farming community, but somehow I still had a lot of friends and I enjoyed doing things that my friends liked to do – talking on our party lines for hours (if you aren’t sure what that is, Google “party line telephone”), having staring contests with cows and watching Sunday night re-runs of Herbie the Love Bug on Channel 6.
I guess it shouldn’t surprise you to hear me say, I had some rather unconventional vacation plans, as well.
When I was 9, we were asked in class, if you could choose any vacation in the world, where would you go? This started a general debate in class about which was better: Disneyland or Disney World. I couldn’t see much merit to visiting either of them: after all, seeing as my Wonderful World of Disney was limited to Channel 6, I wasn’t sure how a vacation of Herbie the Love Bug re-runs could be anything but mundane. I mean, I wasn’t even really into cars. Except maybe Kit from the Knight Rider.
This being the mid-eighties, it was still the period of the cold war. I suppose my young mind was drawn by the romanticized stories we heard about in German class, like the East German Balloon Escape (now there was a Sunday night Disney movie I would have loved to watch!). I was amazed to hear that people needed to line up outside bakeries for hours to get their bread allotment in Eastern Bloc Countries. And the world of music had already cracked my imagination wide open to faraway lands and people. Taking violin and piano lessons, singing in choirs, going to Symphony concerts, I was fascinated to discover the Mighty Handful, a group of composers who held other careers, bearing delightful mouthfuls of names like Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, who just happened to compose magnificent symphonies on the side. It all sounded like a triumph of humanity!
My hand shot up, “Russia”, I proclaimed. “I want to go to Russia on holiday”.
Red Square, Moscow - I mean, come on! It even looks like a fairy tale! What kid wouldn’t want to visit?
Maybe this was a pivotal moment in my youth that defined the kind of person I have striven to become: a bit of a nomadic artist. After all, since that declaration, I’ve moved to 13 cities in 6 countries on 3 different continents; I’ve backpacked through Europe and Turkey, visited the pyramids and the Burj Khalifa, and traveled to many new and exciting places that I certainly didn’t know the name of back when I was 9. Come to think of it, many of these places didn’t exist yet back when I was 9!
It took a while, but the day finally came 20 years later when that vacation dream became a reality. My husband and I had arrived at the Rossiya Hotel located right on the Red Square in Moscow in the middle of the night (this hotel has a whole intriguing story of its own!). It was summer, and so the light had already been streaming in to our room for at least an hour when I woke up*. Opening my eyes to broad daylight at 4:30am, I was sure I was dreaming. I couldn’t believe I’d finally made it to Russia! I hoped that the sheer power of my glowing eyeballs staring at my husband would wake him up. I could not WAIT another minute longer to explore this city, this country that I had been dreaming of visiting for 20 years! After what felt like an eternity, and yes, maybe a little prodding in addition to the staring, we were up and out on the streets by 5:30 in the morning discovering the sights that had been waiting for me all those years: Red Square, the Bolshoy Theatre, Lenin’s Mausoleum, a huge statue of Yuri Gagarin, and most importantly, the Scriabin Museum (Scriabin also had a party line, so count me in good company!). Best. Vacation. Ever.
…though I’ve never made it to Disneyland or Disney World, so I guess I don’t know what I’m missing.
*For the mental soundtrack I have of this moment, listen to Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Let Beauty Awake” from his cycle Songs of Travel.
What blue-sky-thinking looks like for a cosmonaut.
