dreams come true

If you're ever wondering what it feels like to have your childhood dreams come true, imagine this:

You are five, learning to read. You are six, gazing at picture books and stories. You are seven; you can write; you make up stories; you dream of writing something good, something Munsch-like. All the while, you watch Heaven paint pictures through your mom's hands and bury within your heart a secret seed: I want to write children's books and I want my mom to illustrate them.

Fast forward. You are 30 years old. Your dreams are all pent up, but still in there. You've written some silly things. It took some time, but now, mom's been illustrating. Three decades of hope now sit on the page in moving, whimsical color. The illustrations for the project make you squeal with glee. You have a meeting with a publisher next week.

DON'T PANIC, people. It's not getting published. The meeting is preliminary, a tentative approach to what is proving to be a vast and overwhelming world: Books and the Book-Making-Process. But anyway, the point is that she's illustrating. She's illustrating for me. Cue: Happy music.

If you're ever wondering what it feels like to have your dreams come true, it feels exactly as good as you think it might, only better.

Lissy Laricchia  on flickr