Some days in a life are like no other. They stay with us, and anytime we bring them up out of the depths of our minds where we keep them safe and fresh, we ride them again as though it was just yesterday, or no more than the day before yesterday. Such as that is this memory for me.

In what month of Fall is the traditional time to make corn shocks? The huge section of land across from my childhood home in the 5400 block of Haverford, west to the Monon and from 54th Street to where 56th Street would one day be, had been harvested and was completely clear in all directions of everything - no fences, no trees - just corn shocks. The slightly mounded mass of land stretched from our street almost to the horizon where the day disappeared every evening - we had beautiful sunsets that stirred my artist parents to paint, and left the same urge in their artist daughter. The Monon tracks are remembered fondly as the source of the wailing trains that passed through in the dark before I feel asleep.

The farmer, whoever he was, had done his job well and left shocks of the dry corn stalks pointed skyward over this entire expanse, looking for any eye to see like an Indian village with at least a couple hundred teepees and no Indians.

This was too much for me at the age of four to resist. I didn't even try. My own playground of forms to run through, hide behind, circle and circle, to fly through even with earth-bound feet as I ran as far as my energy would take me, was a freedom of the spirit as big as the sky above. I wish it could have been shared with listless, stressed-out, bruised and broken-hearted older folks who needed something to give them back what life in its harshness has taken away, but at least I can say that while these days of playing in the cornfield lasted, I appreciated every darn minute of it.

My mother could still see me from the house, usually the kitchen window, to the top of the crest. Therefore, I was free to play without interruption but to remember that I must stay in sight so that she knew I was safe. If I passed the crest to venture down the other gently sloping side, she could not see me so I was told to stay in her view. This rule did not dampen my enthusiasm or my imagination - the distance from the house was enough to complete the vision I had that this lowly cornfield was now my world and I was its ruler.

So, of course, I set about to build a throne - I think I thought of it as that then, I know I do today. The specified shock was almost straight across from the house and at the crest of the field. I beat with my fists against the top of the stalk bundle until the top half or so was broken and flat, making a seat, with some of the stalks on the other side remaining upright to lean against as a backrest. Being made of nothing more than a dry corn shock, it was surprisingly strong, and I had no problem climbing up to the seat or swinging my feet down again to the clod-covered ground below.

The most joyful times were as I sat high, with as big an idea of my earthly possibilities as maybe I ever had, the immensity of the openness surrounding me, sky and field, being young enough to be ignorant of the responsibilities of such a kingdom and old enough to be aware of the sensations of space, freedom, boundless time and no one to argue with me. So I sat there, commanding a view of at least a block length on each side and a block and a half up to the woods bordering my field - my kingdom of shocks, a view a four-year old can imagine as just slightly less than the entire world. I sat there on my shock throne in such perfect power-laced peace, as long as I could, until someone came to get me for dinner.

My kingdom didn't last long, maybe just a few days. The farmer who created it also destroyed it by gathering the shocks and, I think, burning them. He did not want me there while he worked. Perhaps my kingdom lasted only a few days - I have no specific memory of the time I was allowed to be in my paradise.

Mother was very unhappy for me. It must have affected me bitterly to see the field scraped bare. She told me then that she had been so happy to see me play in the shocks. She had left me alone to play in my field because she knew they would be gone, but also because when she was a little girl she had her own days of freedom and joy playing in the corn shocks at her Aunt Daisy's farm, and her family even nicknamed her "Shocky", which was what I heard them call her at family reunions when she was an adult, so as she watched me play I happily reminded her of those days of her own childhood.