Friends keep reminding me of the lessons I’m learning. I am glad they read my Blog! Thank you! This week I started thinking about the posts about play, and how it can change my attitude. Lately there hasn’t been a lot of time to play.

Then, I found a question in my notes. I decided I needed to revisit my playful side. The question is:

Is life a bit more adventuresome with play?

Adventure? When I started forming the idea of Milly Really; one of my questions was: Can I find adventure in change? The thought morphed into a desire to find the adventure in the God-given change in my life. This idea became my byline for Milly Really: “Adventures within Change”

Back to my question, playing and adventure. Does one have to be an adventuresome person to have adventures? Just what does adventuresome mean anyway? I could beat my chest and yell: “I want to be adventuresome!” Really Milly, is that even a word? Let’s see…

Adventuresome (adjective): daring, willing or eager to participate in exciting or risky activities. [Ref: Encarta Dictionary]

Eek! As you have probably guessed…I’m not much of a risk taker. I’m willing to participate in reading and writing stories about adventures but actually taking the risk. I struggle with that one. Okay so how does play fit into a life of taking more risk and me {gulp} being daring?

The first memory that came to mind was playing with my friends in the front yard of my childhood home. We had a huge Florida Holly Tree in the middle of the front yard with beautiful green grass split by a sidewalk. We would gather the neighborhood kids and play in the front yards were our Moms could keep an eye on all us little hellions…um…angels.

We played games and acted out our imaginations. When this memory surfaced, us kids were playing Pirate! Arrgghh! It seems my tomboy sister was always one of the lead pirates of the pack. Me? Well I was a girly girl. I seemed to end up tied to the Holly tree trunk. See the yard was the ship’s deck and the short hedges trimming the yard were the railings of the ship. The tree was almost center of the yard which made it the great mast. The branches and leaves created the sails. Now the sidewalk…was the plank of course! Milly was the damsel in distress.

Of course I figured out how to get loose (Note: we never tied anyone with real rope. The dads would have tanned our hides if we snitched the rope out of the garage!). In my puffy dress I would grab a cutlass (usually we cut them from cardboard) and fight like a pirate wench! How grand we were. True fantasy pirates we were. Our hearts of gold sailed on a deck of cool green and a massive tree to guide us through oceans of imagination.

We fought rogue pirates, evil kings, and sea monsters. Oh yeah! We always won! There were injuries of course but no man was left behind. Oh what fun absorbing the adventure right down to our dirty toes. Yes it’s Florida! We kicked off our shoes and ran barefoot. We were sweaty and smudged by the time we were called in to clean up for dinner (yes we all had to find our shoes before going back in the house {hee hee}). In these cases baths came before dinner.

And I wonder where my imagination came from. Hmm…There may be a case for play in my life. To live the dreams I want to live, I need my imagination. To write, to travel, to explore…I will need adventuresome play. So yes, I want the dream bad enough to take the risks. I will need play to help me be more daring. It cannot be all work in my life. I do think the old adage “All work and no play makes Milly a dull girl” applies here.

Time to let the imagination soar! Time to relax and play a bit. Now I just need to contact the travel agent and actually book a flight…Milly flying? that’ll definitely be interesting to say the least.

Bless your pirate heart {whisper: It is gold ya know}…Arrgghh!

Milly