Imagination.

When I was a kid, we didn't have much. We lived in government housing in Allston, had hand-me-downs from Salvation Army, and my parents were incredibly hard workers, taking shifts that no one else wanted to take after scoring jobs at Hewlett-Packard in Waltham. My grandparents and aunts and uncles watched my brother and I during the day. With virtually no toys, we had to be VERY creative. So we did things like put sheets over the tops of chairs to create a "tent" and play house, or use shoeboxes and tissues and tape to make a little house for our donated Barbie toys, pretend that grass was the "hay" for our broken dump truck, or lay several chairs with the seat backs on the floor and pretend we were driving a space ship. We had nothing, but we were happy, and you were forced to make do with what you had because at that point, ignorance is bliss. I'll have to dig up some old photos!

Fast forward 30+ years later we're still doing the same thing. That is, trying to be imaginative. One day the mattress pad was drying on the crib (that Kasen no longer uses, but we don't have anywhere to put it so it's stuck there!) and I decided to drape it across to the bed and see what'd he do. Kasen loved it. He crawled underneath it and claimed it as his own, and asked me to join him for a "picnic." He'd run from his room and bring back all kinds of wares for us to "eat." Later we dragged the picnic blanket out from underneath the tent.

And he found one of the Boon foam sharks from his bath and decided to pretend it was swimming...and trying to eat me. Oh, Kasen.