Twinkle, twinkle, little star
How I wonder what you are
Up above the world so high
Like a diamond in the sky
Twinkle, twinkle, little star
How I wonder what you are…

This lovely nursery rhyme is likely familiar to most of us. A charming relic of our own childhoods, or perhaps recycled through grandchildren, and great-grands.

For me it’s also a bonafide ear worm, a catchy piece of music or melody that gets stuck in our heads and repeats involuntarily. I find myself humming the tune even as I write
this.

I grew up in the idyllic 1950s America. Summers in the suburbs offered lots of bike riding and playing with neighbors. Just be home by dark, parents would say. We thought we were astonishingly free. Little did we realize we had a whole network of parents watching over us.

It was a childhood filled with fairytales and wonder. We were free to imagine.

I shall always be grateful to my parents for the bedroom ceiling they painted. Odd, you may think, but I am very serious.
Against a backdrop of light, almost imperceptible, yellow, my parents adapted the stippling paint technique. They wadded up newspaper, dipped a piece in red, green, or blue paint, then pressed the wad to the ceiling.

When done, we had a ceiling full of unique and irregular shapes. We stared at them to wind down toward sleep. Pointing excitedly, “Do you see the green rhinoceros? Right there!” “That’s not a rhino, that’s a buffalo.”

We lived in a fantasy world where we both could be right, when buffalos and rhinos both roamed the US. And they could be green, blue, or red. The next night, the same splotch might become Lassie or Rin Tin Tin.

It was all possible in the wonderland that was our childhood ceiling.

My podcast, which debuts today, is all about recognizing and celebrating the wonder in our lives.

I’ll bet you that, once you start looking, you’ll see that it’s everywhere!

Check out the podcast at livingthesedays.me