My first dream was to be a ballerina. That was because I suspect it had been my mother's dream, not allowed by her parents, and thus she enrolled me in ballet school when I was three. For a while all went well. I had nice solos and I won prizes in dance competitions (including a couple at the All England). Then I turned eleven and I shot up to the size I am now. Five foot six and a half. Not incredibly tall for these days but definitely tall for a woman when I was growing up. And too tall for a ballet dancer. A ballerina has to be no taller than her male partner when she is on pointe. So around five two is perfect.
Nobody said anything but it became clear I was not destined for ballet greatness. In the next ballet the teacher called out various girls' names: You will be the wood fairies, she said. Then she pointed to the other side of the room. And you will be the water sprites. And then she pointed at me: And you will be the tree. I was the fricking tree! I had to stand and sway while the dear little water sprites and wood fairies danced around me. If I could have dropped a branch on them I would have done.
So that was the end of my ballet career (but I can still sway really nicely). So, never being a shrinking violet, I decided I wanted to be a movie star. I started writing scripts for movies for me to star in: all really sad and dramatic. And I created a complete persona for myself. I decided what I was going to look like and where I was going to live. My house in Beverly Hills and my retreat in Palm Springs. At this stage I had never even seen Beverly Hills or Palm Springs but I knew they were where movie stars lived. I pictured my Palm Springs house surrounded by lush palm trees amid the hills. I can't tell you my disappointment when I first saw Palm Springs years later. As we drove in past strip malls , mobile home parks,and every fast food restaurant in the universe my heart fell. This wasn't MY Palm Springs. And I never became a movie star either.
I decided I'd never be good enough an actress and never beautiful enough either, so I went into the production side of BBC drama, started writing plays and the rest is history. Fast forward to this year. We had been spending the winter at a condo in Phoenix for ten years and decided we needed more space (at least I needed a separate space to write). So we looked for a house and bought one in a small community on the mountain in North Phoenix.
And my office is upstairs, far enough away from the rest of the house to give me privacy, with a balcony that looks out onto the mountains. (The views are from my office glass doors) As I sat at my desk for the first time I looked out and I thought: this is my dream house in Palm Springs after all these years! Maybe not quite as luxurious as I dreamed it would be, and certainly not with the butler and maids I'd planned for, but with the same feel that I'd always wanted! And I also realized that all those movie scripts I created for myself actually honed my writing skills to bring me to this place.
Isn't it wonderful when life turns out as we had planned?
So what were your childhood dreams? Did they ever come true?
