To Be the Dreamy Child.

Three or four summers ago we had a lot of angry sunsets. Evening after evening was one long exhibition of aggressive Jackson Pollocks. Last year they were less abstract, treating the eye to a menagerie of bears and dragons and rabbits. This evening’s sunset is a soft one, resembling folds of meringue in orange, salmon and various shades of grey.

It reminded me that some children are called ‘dreamy.’ They’re the ones who often play alone – who look for the fairy folk in the wood, who have an imaginary friend, who see lions in the clouds and death’s heads on the wallpaper, who sit on the headland watching passing ships and hearing the songs of the pirates even at that distance.

And I thought that maybe dreamy children aren’t dreamy at all. They’re simply aware of something beyond the obvious, something that most of us grown ups don’t have the capacity to understand.