A Life of Fiction: Daydreams

Sometimes I wish I was somewhere else.

Don't get me wrong - I love my home and I love my family and friends and the people around me. I know if I really did leave it would be extremely difficult, like transplanting a tree whose roots are intertwined with countless others. Possible, but terribly, terribly painful. But sometimes I just want to leave and explore and maybe stumble upon an adventure. What's so surprising to me is that in one day - in a span of about 3 hours - I can daydream about being in two entirely different places.

One thing I love about my job is the freedom to meet my clients (read: preschoolers I work with) at places other than a house or preschool classroom. As it's October plenty of parents (and I) feel that going to the pumpkin patch would be a fun, seasonally appropriate thing to do. Here in Santa Barbara the only true pumpkin patch is Lane Farms: a smallish family-run farm that has pumpkins, a hay ride, scarecrows, a corn maze, and farm animals.

As I walked around Lane Farms with my 2-year-old client and his mom and aunt I lost myself in the whimsy of the farm. Now I realize true farm life isn't sentimental. I know it means being up before light and down after dark. I know it's a physically demanding life, and that - more than other occupations - farming begs the mercy of the weather.

Yet, even knowing this, the simple beauty of the farm drew my mind away from the chaos of balancing work and home and stress, and into a pleasant, if instantaneous, daydream. For a split second I was miles away, walking in the sunshine and watching a tractor working. I looked up at my client's mother and asked, "Can you imagine what it would be like to live like this?" I gestured to the still tractor. She wrinkled her nose.

"I know, right?" she answered. "It would be terrible."

Not quite what I was thinking.

I nodded and made a non-committal sound and turned back to her son with a small sigh. Thoughts of farm life would have to wait until I was no longer working.

However, as soon as I left Lane Farms I was rushing to get ready for a concert with the girls. At 6 o'clock I pulled into my friend's driveway and within 15 minutes we were on our way to the Santa Barbara Bowl. We arrived at our seats in time to hear the opening act sing her last 3 songs. This was a surprise, because the opener started exactly on time - unheard of in music. I don't have much to say about her...I'm sure I would have enjoyed her songs, but her voice was breaking by the end of her 40 minute set. She also announced to the crowd that this was her first official show. I turned to my friend. "If her voice is this tired after her first show on her first tour I don't think she will last very long." It will be interesting to see what happens with her carreer.

But the opening act (whose name I just can't remember) is not what triggered my next daydream. No...Jason Mraz did that.

If we are focusing on quality of voice, well, Jason Mraz's voice was almost stronger at the end of his set than at the beginning. And he had a way of singing and interacting with the crowd that almost made it seem like he was singing directly to Section G, Row J, Seat 14.

Let's ignore his commanding stage presence and skilled dance moves, the emotion of his singing and lyrics that reach out and grab the heart-strings. The moment that stands out most clearly in my mind is the moment I have come to expect at every concert I attend. Every person in the audience was standing and singing the lyrics back to Jason Mraz. He stopped singing and closed his eyes and listened to the sound of thousands of people serenading him with his own lyrics. It was that moment when I had the wistful thought of, 'I wish I was on that stage right now...'

Suddenly I was gone. I wasn't standing in the audience. I was in another city, standing on a stage, listening to the sound of thousands being touched by my words.

Somehow, not even three hours after wishing to be wearing a sun-hat on a farm I was now dreaming to be living the life of a musician.

But, in all honesty, when the concert ended and I yawned, exhausted from the work week and the excitement of the evening, I was simply happy to be one of the girls. Stumbling from laughter and - for the moment - carefree, I was happy to be me: A child development specialist living a quiet, sometimes stressed, mostly happy life in Santa Barbara.