Hello everyone! I know it has been a long time since my last post, but I just want to be sure that the work I post is high quality, you know? So this is a little piece that I've been wanting to write for a long time, but I just havn't had the time to put down on paper. Laura had to teach someone how to tell a story, and bring them to class, so I volunteered. I knew that would be the perfect opportunity and the perfect excuse to get me to write it. With alot of coaching from Laura, I was able to simplify it so that only the best parts were included and I love it like this. Now that I've told it as a story, reading it almost doesn't do it justice but I suppose it'll have to do...unless you know me, and in that case I would love to tell it to you! So with that, here it is. Enjoy. :)
The Mighty Epsilon
As a boy, dream is all I did.
Ms. Mayberry would often ask me why I wasn’t like the other children from the orphanage.
They would play baseball and hopscotch, but not me. I was different.
I loved to dream. I would dream that the walls were made of marshmallows so I could eat right through them and run to every toy store in town. I would dream I was a bird so I could fly into the sky and never come back. I would even dream sometimes that my parents were still alive and that we were happy.
But more than anything, I would dream I had a dog. But not just any dog. A white one with black spots and floppy ears-but not too floppy. Every night I would dream of the day he would jump right through my bedroom window and be my greatest friend.
One day, I even told Ms. Mayberry. “I want a puppy!” I said. “But not just any puppy, a white one with black spots and little floppy ears that bend over just right.”
She just looked down at me over her glasses and said “You know animals aren’t allowed in the orphanage.”
“Well, if YOU won’t get me one”, I exclaimed, “I’ll just wait until the day he comes to me and jumps right through my bedroom window!"
Then she tenderly stroked my cheek and said “Honey, that doesn’t even make sense.”
And she left me there, but I didn’t mind that she didn’t understand. I knew he would come, but I just didn’t know that he would come that very night.
I was in my little room about to get under the covers when something dashed right through the open window. And I knew exactly who it was.
I crawled to the foot of my bed and there smiling back up at me was a little white dog with black spots and floppy ears that bent over just right.
“I knew you would come.” I said. “What took you so long?”
“What makes you think that I’m late?” he asked, cocking his head to one side like most dogs do.
Then I jumped to the floor and gathered him in my arms. I set him on my bed and told him “I always knew that you could talk.”
Do you like to dream? He asked me.
I LOVE to dream, I said.
So he began to sing:
“I am the king of dreams and I’ll show you everything!
The autumn leaves and the summer rain,
The sweetest songs and the strangest games,
The burning dusk and the breaking dawn,
I am the mighty Epsilon.”
“Can we dream your favorite dream?” I asked him.
“Of course!” he cried out, “As long as you have a box.”
“A box?” I asked intrigued. “What kind of box?”
“Oh any box!” he said. “A small box, a big box, a tall box, a thin box, even greens ones with red polka dots. Any box.”
So I rummaged through my room, and found a box about the size of my hand. “Look”, he whispered.
So I looked inside and suddenly we were at the foot of a mountain, the tallest mountain I had ever seen, on the edge of a plateau. And as I walked to side of the cliff, the sun came up and a sea of golden light splashed across my face. I marveled at the beauty of it all and wondered how and why it would travel so far just to warm the coldest parts of me.
Every night we dreamt together. We would dream of all kinds of things! We dreamt of jungles and dragons, kingdoms and pirates, oceans and galaxies. Sometimes we would even dream our favorite dream- that sunrise at the foot of the mountain. And we would watch it over and over again.
And I would ask him “Why a box?”, but Epsilon would never say.
Then one day when I was old enough, we left that orphanage and we never went back. We left to see the world and it wasn’t long until I found myself at foot of that same mountain, only that time it wasn’t a dream. And that day I saw a real sunrise, and as I fell to my knees, I realized that all the dreams that we had dreamed were not only possibilities, but realities.
“Epsilon, how come you never told me?” I said.
He simply cocked his head to one side like most dogs do, and said “You never asked.”
So I pleaded, “Show me true joy, show me true sorrow! Epsilon, I want to know the world!”
Then he looked into my eyes and said, “Boy, I’ll show you everything!”
We dreamt of a better world. A world without hunger, a world without war. And we dreamt like that for years.
He made the world shine through me and our dreams became reality.
But one day, I came home and cried out his name, “Epsilon!”, and I waited for that song I had heard so many times before.
But it never came.
Epsilon, my greatest friend, was gone.
And I cried that day but I didn’t cry for long because I realized that he had taught me to dream without a box. He had taught me that I could dream of anything, and make it my reality.
Even now I’m sure he roams the world, looking for other little girls and boys that are just waiting for him to jump right through their bedroom window so that they can say “I knew that you would come! I always knew that you could talk!”
And if I try hard enough, I can still hear him sing,
“I am the king of dreams and I’ll show you everything!
The autumn leaves and the summer rain,
The sweetest songs and the strangest games,
The burning dusk and the breaking dawn,
I am the mighty Epsilon.”
