Imagination

In Cleopatra: A Life, Stacy Schiff digs into the history books to share with us who the true Cleopatra was. As a member of From Left to Write book club, I received a copy of this book for review. You can read other members posts inspired by Cleopatra: A Life on book club day, September 27 at From Left to Write.

I must admit I've not finished this book yet but I'm enjoying it very much. As a member of the book club, From Left to Write I'm not doing a review of the book but writing a post inspired by the book itself.

When I first saw the book's cover immediately what came to mind was my mother's pearls and the fun I had as a little girl using them to play dress up.

Growing up we always lived in a home provided by what ever ranch my dad happened to be working for as he was a ranch foreman. Because of that we usually always lived more than 8 miles from the closest town or city. Once we were 30 miles away! That was a long way in those days, now I commute that far just to get to work every day.

We also didn't have cable and the shows we did get on TV were not interesting enough to keep me and my sister and brothers busy, therefore the job of keeping us entertained and out of trouble fell to my mother who was a stay at home mom. Luckily for us she had a wonderful imagination!

I can remember her dressing us up in her many scarfs, tying them around our waists and pinning them on our heads with bobby pins. I remember that when she dressed us up in that particular outfit I always called myself Cleopatra. How I knew who Cleopatra was I really don't know, but I did. I would pin my mother's pearls like a crown around my head and do the dance of the seven veils. Well I did a dance, how much it looked like the dance of the seven veils I don't know.

My mom would use her eyebrow pencil and paint cat's eyes on me, something like this. . .

And I would always beg for a beauty mark, like this. . .

My sister usually just wanted to wear her scarfs as a cape like Superman (not Supergirl, she always wanted to be Superman) and she would play with the boys and I would be lost in my own little world of dancing and palaces, walking a tiger as a playmate as I imagined Cleopatra would.

"The key to life is imagination. If you don't have that, no matter what you have, it's meaningless. If you do have imagination...you can make a feast of straw"  ~  Jane Stanton Hitchcock