Daydreaming has long been one of my favorite pastimes, perhaps because I come from a solitude-loving family, a family of individuals who each needed our space, our alone-time, time to read and think and dream. I’m so grateful for that.

Not that we didn’t have plenty of togetherness—too much of it on those long summer car trips when my father combined business with our family vacation. I recall long periods of desolate scenery, being told we had to wait to go to the bathroom, that the leftover roast beef sandwich was what you were getting whether you wanted it or not, that the motel did not have a swimming pool and we wouldn’t be there for another 10 hours anyway. I took to watching the white line of the highway through the back seat window, imagining detailed sagas of families that lived on the passing hillsides, little girls who ran barefoot through the golden weeds that waved in the breeze as we sped by.

 I still daydream all the time. Sometimes I can get myself to look at life a certain way, and see that dreams are coming true, floating up around me like bubbles. They may pop. But if they do, more are bubbling, floating up all the time. Right now, the dream I’ve had for as long as I can remember, the dream that I could be a writer … look, it’s a fragile bubble floating right up in the air, catching the light, drifting higher and higher.