WARNING: HISTORICAL NOVELS MAY ALTER VIEW OF REALITY

After I finish my bedtime reading of Elizabeth Goudge's Pilgrim Inn, I feel transformed. Little ideas start to tweak my subconcious until they bubble into full blown ideas, where I promptly pop them after they have submerged into today's reality. But I love that feeling in the moment where I believe that I will change my life to be more like it was in the past, be in the 18th century or this post war novel I'm now reading.

Just as I'm playing with these ideas, I'm hoping that I can develop them into something that is here to stay. Why not? I imagine myself detached from today's pushy ideals of an American woman, where I am not expected to develop my resume and career so that I am gradually achieving more money and better titles. I am not expected to compete with men by becoming like them. The idea of traveling somewhere for a month long vacation with my family is ok because I don't only have two weeks vacation a year which I have to divy out in paltry long weekends throughout the year.

Just as I am writing this, I realize how incredibly ungrateful I sound for not appreciating the rights I have as a woman today. Forgive me, but this is my daydream and in my daydream I still have all the rights, but not the pushy expectations imposed upon me by society.

May I continue? I am imagining how my household would be different in those times. They had fewer belongings and those items were cherished. Life was difficult back then, but I can still borrow some of those forced values on myself.

Start with that month long vacation, where I will take my sparse but perfectly fitted, tailor-made wardrobe and my few beauty products in my trunk to visit my family. While visiting we will share meals together while NOT watching the tv, we will talk, listen to music (ok in this daydream I play the piano), drink tea and make jokes about past times together. There will be a contentment hanging in the air that first night as we all enjoy one another and experience only what the evening is offering.

I sense the importance of material items like clothes and gifts, but there is a reverence toward them that is foreign today. I want to feel that reverence for what we buy ourselves or each other. That is something worth bringing back, heartfelt sentiment and true gratitude.

Really, I intend to grab these pearls of wisdom from the past because they are worth coming back in style. If neon can make a comeback, I can certainly make my case for fewer clothes, appreciation for what we have & creating my lifestyle instead of following some prescribed plan.

See that bubble is about to burst because I'm already feeling very mumsy and old-fashioned for writing this. See, POP!, there it goes, but now I have recorded it while in my time machine induced daydream so I can remember it forever.