North of Titania

Many talk about fairies and magical creatures but nobody had ever really seen one. Titania was a made up place, there are so many of them when you are a child. It was a place of make believe, of genies too, and lands with mystical trees, multi coloured flowers and unnaturally perfect skies, it was a place where dreams came true.

I was an imaginative child, I had very few friends and my family life was quite Hellish. I loved worlds and places of make believe, places to let my mind escape to. Often escaping to them for hours at a time. Although I couldn’t tell you how or why I forgot this in adulthood. But I was a braver kid when I found myself tripping into a world of fairies and genies, with frozen lakes and blue skies, through the bottom of my toy box.

Suddenly, trees that looked like they belonged on alien planets or in hot countries that I had never yet seen. Rivers and streams, and green fertile paradise was abounding all around me.

Flowers of all my favourite colours grew on hilltops, and purple poppies shimmied up out of cracks in the sandy herringbone pathways that I followed, then sprouted into beautiful plants before my very eyes. Every shrub had several rainbow roses blossoming out of it evenly and so perfectly balanced. If love could be a planet, then this was almost certainly what it would look like.

It was like an oil painting, and I knew that once I stepped inside I would not want to leave. Even though there was nobody else that I knew there and no people, only animals that talked and strange beings that appeared then disappeared as soon as you met their eyes. The world was like a good book that you start reading then can’t get your head out of, because the story is so perfect that you get lost inside of it.

I had been looking quite innocently for my favourite toy, inside my toy box on my own, as I often was in my nursery. Left to my own devices, no nanny no mum or dad, they were far too preoccupied to be around me. I was too clumsy and loud, brutish at times, I might have tantrums if somebody told me off. I was not a strong kid, but I was quick on my feet and strong willed, quite defiant at times.

I once fell in, being very young and very small. It was a very big and colourful toy box which my dad in a moment of creative madness had decided to build out of old chipboard, he even painted it in primary colours for me. All my toys were kept in it, but the hinge was not stable and when I fell in I nudged something and the lid closed on me.

I screamed until I was blue in that box, for what felt like hours, until somebody rescued me. My grandma in fact came and put the lid back up, she had come to visit me, which she only really ever did once a month. So I suppose I had been lucky in that moment. I was red and sweating, and covered in my own tears and had wet myself. Mum felt so bad she cradled me and rocked me, it took her a long time to settle me down.

But I kept that toy box for years, I had it as a toddler, and as I grew up. I fell into it again or rather chose to hide in it, when mum and dad were arguing and I couldn’t stand the sound. I got stuck in it time and time again.

The black out period from the first incident never came back to me, neither did the second. I have no idea of how long I was in there for, or what nightmares would ensue when I found myself trapped there in the most evil feeling darkness.

A fear of the dark did develop though, and after the age of about 4 or 5 I had to sleep in my bed with a night light on. It was shaped like a mushroom, with holes and shapes cut out of it, and decorated all around it painted ever so delicately and intricately, were fairies of some Peter Pan like world that somebody elses imagination had clearly thought up.

I loved that night light, it stayed with me for years after, and became an essential part of my night time sleep routine.

As I got older dad decided it would be a cool idea to put a lock on the toy box as it was getting very full, and so the second incident that I fell into it again, somehow it locked itself on me while I was still inside it. 5 year old me, screaming again and crying my heart out, feeling god knows how many different traumatic emotions, and not getting rescued until mum came to my aid hours later.

But once again, I could not remember what went on in there. Still I loved my toy box, it was practical and useful, but also the only thing my dad ever built for me, because he rarely took any interest in me most of the time.

Oh yes, going back to the 7 or 8 year old me, who chose to hide in it. I didn’t get stuck in it this time thankfully. But I did fall asleep, and then I ended up dreaming of being somewhere else.

This happened several times, between the ages of 7 and 10.

This toy box of mine, surprisingly did not trigger any bad memories in me as one might expect. My living life with a mum and dad who only ever argued, was terrorising enough in the waking world, that I was no longer fearful of dying in a toybox that seemed like the devils trap to me, locking me in or closing in over me.

I think my imagination of other worlds and places, must have stemmed from there, and started this regression and transformation in me.

I can’t really remember now, what dad had painted on it. Yet I had this toy box for so long, that I should really remember it well now. But I find it hard to picture what it looked like on the outside. There were pictures and glyphs on the inside, and I can remember them more.

I remember seeing stars that were painted in neon yellow, and they glowed in the dark like real stars. Although I am sure they were added much later on, after the first clumsy incident where I fell inside.

I think that on the outside there was something like a rainbow in the early days. But things like purple flowers, trees that curved and curled like they belonged to an alien planet, were also added much later on in my young life. The colours of the leaves seemed to change with the seasons, so my dad must have carried on evolving that painted toybox, because it never stayed the same, and that might explain why my memory of the way it looked is foggy.

According to my mum on reflective talks we have had since, I used to sit in it with cushions, and it became my happy place to read a book to myself. I was quite the book worm and was fantastic at reading for my age, always ahead of the other kids in my year. There were several nights when I‘d read myself a book then fall asleep in it.

The first time, age 7, I woke up in a tree whose branches had wrapped around me like a crib, and I remember it being warm and comfy.

At age 8, I woke to find myself lying in the middle of a storm cloud, and I tried to stand up but it was slippery, because I couldn’t find my footing very well and nearly fell right through it. Gripped by something like fear and adrenaline.

Then the thunderbolts happening beneath me tickled my toes and sent a wave of electricity up my legs and spine. A hole appeared and I fell through the cloud. Screaming, I woke up instantly, and there I was back in the toy box.

I pushed the lid up to get out, my body covered in bath bubbles. Yes, weird! Mum thought so too, she didn’t know how I fell asleep in my toy box with the raging storm going on outside, and she certainly couldn’t remember giving me a bubbly bath at any point that day.

When I was around 10 years old, I finally had my own life outside of the house.

Once I disappeared for a whole day. Mum and dad only realised I was missing at about 4pm, though they had not seen me since 8am in the morning, when I had my breakfast cereal at the dining table like usual.

Mum says I had been dressed up as an explorer, and told her I was going to go on an adventure that day. When she asked me where I was going to go, I told her Titania and I was going to catch fairies there and find a unicorn. I said I might be gone over lunch if it took a while.

She had laughed at me sweetly, doubtful of course, because I always came downstairs when I needed food, but she thought it was cute that my imagination was so vivid. I really seemed to wholeheartedly believe in these other worlds, and we had an attic so sometimes I would spend time up there too, with the Scalextric and the lego, making up worlds and stories of my own.

If anybody picked on me about these adventures I truly believed in, apparently I could get quite sensitive and cry sometimes.

But I can’t remember doing anything like that, I only remember having the odd tantrum when I couldn’t get my own way, and running away upstairs to shut the door on the world, when arguments would bring discord to my idea of a peaceful home life.

I tripped into the toy box on my 10^th birthday, and I fell through the box into this other world I named Titania that day.

I fell through the clouds there was no storm brewing this time. The sky was blue and there were frozen lakes, streams and rivers I could see as I fell, and I wasn’t afraid. Because it felt very much like floating gently, as oppose to hurtling tremendously fast towards the ground, and feeling as though it’s going to be the last thing you see before splitting like a melon upon the ground and bleeding out.

I landed with a gentle thud by way of two or three well positioned and leafy trees, then got caught hanging upside down I eventually fell through the gripping claws of a sturdy beanstalk, and landed softly on a grassy verge.

It was soft like a down mattress, and a short stone throw away from me was the cutest little robin twiddling a berry in its beak. It looked at me with one eagerly curious eye and whistled, then it jumped and flapped its wing at me, and whistled again.

It was as if the robin was pointing its beak in a certain direction, and with its whistles and twiddles of the bare stick now, having consumed the berry, it was telling me in its own way where I should go.

I walked towards it and it briefly flipped up in the air and moved further ahead. So I began to follow it, curious to find out where it was taking me.

It disappeared and then reappeared again, as I followed the dusty path through the trees. It kept on doing the same thing, flapping its wings a bit and tweeting its vocal harmony. If I tried to take a wrong turn, it chirped in a sharper tone, and I knew it was telling me that it was the wrong way to go. I had no idea why, but I felt as though I needed to follow it.

I ended up in a meadow with the brightest yellow and white daisies, and there were marigolds and daffodils too. Suddenly little sparkles started falling down all around me and seemed to be everywhere, as though the sky had started raining stars, and the sky appeared much bluer and brighter here. Like I had stepped out of winter and suddenly walked into the summer.

A grey rabbit accidentally tickled my foot as it sped by me, I felt it before my eyes caught it running through the long grass towards the North. Then I noticed lots of bobbing long grass stems waving all around me, and I saw thousands of rabbits running everywhere.

As I turned around to take it all in, there was the most beautiful elegant horse I had ever seen standing not far ahead of me, it chewed on some long seeding strands of grass, and stared right at me with purpley blue eyes. Not only was its coat sparkling, but it had a spiral horn upon its head. I had found my unicorn!

It was an enamouring sight my eyes warmed, I was awed so much that my legs felt weak and I nearly fell backwards.

Then I fainted, the last thing I felt was my feathered robin friend and spindly legs landing on my chest. I felt it pecking my skin, a communication I only looked into later in life, like morse code spelling something out to me.

I remember then being lifted, at first I thought it was the unicorn somehow picking me up, because I felt a warmth like the sun, and a sensation of being held in an embrace by a loving mother.

I opened my eyes again and much to my disappointment it was my mum, lifting me up from the toy box. I was back there in it again, and I was covered in dandelion seeds. She was in tears and had some sad news to deliver to me.

My father had died that day of a heart attack. She had to tell me that he wouldn’t be coming home, and he wouldn’t be decorating my toy box or making any alterations to it ever again.

I never seemed to find my way back into that other world after that, as much as I tried to go there time and time again in the years following his death. Until the toy box he had built me, quite literally fell apart because I got too big for it.

Here I am sitting with my mother now, and she is seated in her armchair in the care home that looks after her. Her mind can remember such things sometimes, with a clarity that I had never gotten from her before. Yet some days the dementia is so bad, she doesn’t even remember who I am.

Her smile is still the same, her hugs are also still as warm, but I know we never hugged enough, and growing up at times felt so lonely.

She tells me tales of my childhood with such love in her eyes, and such spark in her voice, even if her perspective is of a different viewpoint now. But on a good day like this one was, she will often tell me these stories and they are no longer hidden from my mind.

These days when I see a robin, I will always think of my dad with fondness, and remember the beautiful thing he did for me, even though he did not give me his time.

It sticks in my memory now, as one of the good ones!