Time passes

I was cleaning out the kids' room, and I found a box marked 'pretend play'.

It was empty. 

I low-key searched the rest of the house over the next few weeks, subconsciously aware of a sense of emptiness, something missing.

I found stuff. A spring-loaded syringe. A plastic potato. Half a tiara. Primary colors grimed over. 

But I remembered elaborate tea sets, a feast of plastic foodstuffs, makeup kits, varied utensils, toolboxes, zoos, benches and easels...

Somewhere between two moves and a lockdown, pretend play had just... gone. 

Soon, the drawings will be gone, then the dresses, then the books...

What do we hold on to, really? 

Memories? A time of half-imagined simplicity and innocence, joy?

Or, as all marketers know, to possibility. 

Everything was possible. 

Soon, it will be a fantastical dreamscape with no relationship to reality... but it will still serve its purpose. 

Happiness, in any way you can get it... still works.