Don’t Put Away Childish Things

As I creep a little closer each year to the half-century mark, I've found myself seeking guidance from the wisest version of myself: my inner child. She's always been with me, refusing to be silenced.

Lately, I hear her more clearly than ever. Sometimes she's my fearless nine-year-old self, convinced the world was waiting to be explored. Sometimes she's the shy twelve-year-old who quietly learned that being invisible felt safer than standing out. Sometimes she's the uncertain fifteen-year-old who was told it was time to put away childish things.

I never did.

I held on to most of the dreams that first took root in childhood. True, I don't own a horse farm—or even a single horse. I probably never will. It's not that I've fallen out of love with horses; it's simply that adulthood has a way of replacing certain passions with other responsibilities.

But the important dreams survived. I dreamed of traveling the world, and I’m getting there. I've lost count of how many countries I've visited—somewhere around forty, I think. I've lived in two different countries, and am always on alert for that little voice in my head telling me it’s time to uproot myself again for a new adventure.

Then, there was my greatest dream of all, to become an author, which I have doggedly pursued my entire life and is finally coming to fruition.

And yet, sometimes the most important things we carry from childhood aren't our dreams at all. They're the stories that kept us company when life became difficult. The places we escaped to when the real world felt hostile. The fictional families who quietly adopted us when we needed them most.

For me, that was Road to Avonlea.

Every week, I waited to return to the idyllic town of Avonlea. Looking back now, I can acknowledge that it was a sanitized vision of turn-of-the-century Prince Edward Island, but that doesn't diminish what it meant to me. At the time, it was exactly what I needed. My family had moved to a new city where I never quite found my place. I was lonely. I longed for community, for belonging, for people who looked after one another. I found those things in the King family and in the residents of Avonlea. Hetty King, stern but loyal. Sarah Stanley, empathetic and precocious. Alec King, steady, dependable, and quietly devoted to those he loved.

Watching the series again as an adult, I've discovered new favorites. Characters I barely noticed as a child now feel meaningful. Jasper Dale, for instance, with his gentle eccentricity and quiet refusal to become someone else simply because the world expected him to. As a child, I found him irritating. As an adult, I admire his authenticity and his utter adoration of the endearing Aunt Olivia.

Perhaps that's one of the gifts of returning to stories we loved as children. They haven't changed, but we have. They reveal different truths depending on who we are when we meet them again.

Sometimes I wonder whether the actors, writers, and creators of Road to Avonlea truly know what they built. Do they know they became part of people's childhoods? Do they know that, for so many of us, they offered more than entertainment? They offered refuge, a place where kindness mattered, where the love of friends and family was unconditional, and where ordinary people tried, sometimes imperfectly, to do the right thing.

Soon, I'll have the extraordinary opportunity to tell them.

In less than a week I’ll be traveling to Charlottetown for the Road to Avonlea Convention, organized by my friend Eve Lemon in conjunction with her inaugural Prince Edward Island Rare Book Fair. We'll attend panel discussions, share dinner with members of the cast at the White Sands Hotel (or Dalvay by the Sea), enjoy fresh lobster along the coast, and visit many L. M. Montgomery sites.

I'm incredibly proud of Eve for bringing this gathering to life. Through nothing more than passion, persistence, and love for the series, she's brought together actors, writers, composers, and—most importantly—the fans who have carried Avonlea with them for decades.

The show ended many years ago, but the need for the kind of world it imagined has not. If anything, it feels even more necessary today. As children, we are often told that growing up means leaving childish things behind. But I've come to believe that maturing isn't about abandoning the stories that shaped us; it's about understanding why they mattered in the first place.

Some stories entertain us. Some stories change us. And every once in a while, a story quietly helps raise us. Road to Avonlea did that for me.

It's one childish thing I refuse to let go of.