The other day while walking my property here, my little country home I call Happy Hollow, even though I’ve been very happy here for a long time, I had a deep sense that something was missing. I couldn’t shake it. I sat down and this wrote itself in one long stream of consciousness.

It is a meditation of sorts, a hymn to honor the happiness and the beauty I’ve been fortunate to find here, and also a prayer for what I never had. I’ve spent many, many happy hours here soaking in the beauty and peace and joy it brings me, but lacking someone to share it with. A partner, a friend, a lover, a soul mate, a child at heart like me, yet capable and responsible too, a grown-up who refuses to grow old. My other half in the truest sense. The partner I never found.

And I thought too of the children we never had together to raise here, the children I had always hoped would fill the air with their laughter and joy the way only children can. The two blended together in the writing of it and so did my own vision of myself as both a ‘Daddy’ and a child still, and it became a sort of dream or fantasy of what might be, an extension of what is…and at the same time a true reflection of my own world, the world I live in here.

So I decided to share it with you all. It is not a plea or a ‘personal’ ad although it is very personal. It is just something I wrote about how I was feeling one day and how I love my home and my life here, yet still long for something more at times.

Visitors are Always Welcome and Encouraged.

Children of All Ages are Admitted Free of Charge!

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Daddy’s Heaven

A Prayer

It is real. It exists.

It is a special place, a place I imagined in my own heart, a dream place any child would love to grow up in, where it would be possible to never grow up, to stay forever young and childlike. Where I dreamed I would want to grow up, if I ever did want to grow up that is.

I’ve worked hard on it and I’ve lived here alone for 12 years now. And I keep waiting. Happy, but still alone.

Wondering if she will ever come. If she is out there and dreams of living in a place like this. If she dreamed the same dream of heaven on earth and it looked like this. Just like this. If someday my angel will come and share my heaven with me. And it would be her heaven too. Our Heaven. Together. Forever.

There are flowers. Lots of flowers. A big, big meadow full of flowers that you can run in and play in and get lost in and lay down and disappear in, and dream dreamy dreams in.

There are flowers in gardens with paths you can walk around on, this way and that, and benches you can sit on and just watch the birds and the bees flying and buzzing around, and then smell the fresh air and look across the yard and see Daddy smiling over at you with love as big as the whole wide world.

There are trees! Trees you can climb up in and squeal, “Daddy, Daddy! Look at me! Look how high up I am.”

There are trees covered in spectacular pink and purple blossoms in the Spring. Trees with blossoms so thick that their heavy scent intoxicates you and makes you feel almost like you will pass out from joy and happiness. And there are trees you can pick sweet moist fruit off of in the Fall. Pears and apples and peaches and plums. And there are scary old gnarled trees with dark forbidding holes in them that might have bats or owls or raccoons living in them too, but you have Daddy to protect you, so you’re not scared at all.

There is a creek with rocks and stones, and babbling and rushing and splashing ripples of laughing water, sparkling in the sun, and inviting you to come and play and wade barefoot. There are fish and frogs and turtles and salamanders under rocks to discover, and beautiful dragonflies like tiny winged faeries and water-walking bugs that trace delicate paths across the still little ponds under the weeping willow if you’re real quiet and still and just sit and watch.

There is a swimming hole to cool off in, and smiling ducks to share it with. A pond to skip flat rocks across and try to break your record for skips. A cool dell to go skinny-dipping in at midnight when the moon is full and huge on hot humid summer nights.

There is a barn where your pony would stay and a field for you to ride him in. There is a chicken coop and in the spring there are sometimes little yellow peeps to be kept warm and cuddle with until they’re big enough to go live outside. And sometimes there are little yellow and brown duckies to keep warm and cuddle with too.

There is a hayloft in the barn that Daddy made into a room to play in or work in or color in or take an afternoon quiet time nap in or have sleepovers in and anything you want to in.

There is always a dog. To be your bestest ever friend. (Besides Daddy!) Sometimes there is a new puppy too. There are always lots of kitties. The old house kitty, the barn kitties, the wild feral kitties that live in the woods and wander through the barn making the dogs go all crazy barking at them. “Hey, what are you doing here!!! Bark, bark, bark!”

There is more, so much more. There are deer that come to visit. Big deer with pointy antlers, and sweet-looking momma deer with tiny little spotted fawns. Cute little cotton-tailed bunnies nibbling on the thick green grass, and smelly striped skunks, and funny fat groundhogs, and little fast chipmunks gone in a blink, and ugly, scary-looking, but still kind of cute possums, and a million chattering acrobat squirrels in the trees, and noisy cackling crows, and stunning wild turkeys strutting by, and circling turkey buzzards floating high in the air, and falcons, and hawks and eagles soaring, up, up into the blue heavens, and tiny mice, and little gray moles and voles and other nervous scurrying little furry critters hiding in the meadow grasses and in their secret hidden tunnels in the ground.

In Spring and in Fall there are seemingly endless migrating flocks of geese and ducks overhead, Canadian geese and beautiful white snow geese and mallard ducks and on and on. Thousands filling the air with their music, honking, honking, honking, and you wish you could soar up there with them wherever they are going and your heart does anyway, goes flying in the sky with them, while you stay here in heaven on earth. Happy. Content. Peaceful.

Early in the morning through the mists of the hollow, if you’re quiet and just peek out the kitchen window, you may even see the big bird, the big blue heron, still as a statue at the edge of the pond, waiting to catch his breakfast.

Little red foxes come and eye the ducks hungrily from the corner of the barn, and a coyote visited once, not afraid of anyone or anything, but kept on his way and left the chickens and ducks alone, thankfully. There was once even a big fuzzy black bear that ambled through, but he ran away when he saw Daddy.

The air, the sky, the woods, the water and the land all teeming with life and wonder and excitement. Waiting.

There is an old log cabin that Daddy lives in and you would live in too. In the winter there is a wood stove in the cabin and it’s warm and cozy. And in the summer it’s cool and dark and quiet and safe when the heat is too much outside and you get tired from playing, playing, playing. It’s small and comfy and it’s ours and it’s home.

Home. Daddy’s home. Your home. Our home.

Daddy is there now. Daddy is always there. Daddy will never leave. And Daddy is waiting for you, for his little girl, for the little girl in you.

Waiting.

For you.

It can’t really be Heaven until there is an angel for Daddy to share it with.

Do you want to come share Heaven with Daddy?