Imaginary Friends

and facts about dolphins or whatever

There is so much that is the same, between my older daughter and I. Our hair the exact same golden-y shade of blonde, her cartwheel a perfect imitation of my own (no I will not lose the opportunity to mention that I have kept my cartwheel, I will take every opportunity to show it off, it is perhaps one of my biggest middle-aged triumphs, that at forty-two I am still some shades of the kid-gymnast I used to be, our child-selves never so far away, never gone, really, simply out of practice), our way of leaping quickly from big feeling to bigger feelings, our enthusiasm for baked goods and pasta, books and and the color pink. We like to belt out Tomorrow, we like florals, we like card games and cafes.

But these things can lure one into a false sense of security, an idea that we are the same when in reality we disconnect at vital places, and it is in those places that we have to invent and reinvent our connection.

The biggest difference between us is in our relationship with reality.

Mine is hazy. Not that I don’t accept reality, I do, but I am a Pollyanna optimist underneath it all, with a brain not built for holding onto the tangible things. I write imaginary worlds, I create imaginary people, I make a living in stories, and some of my strongest childhood memories are of the journals I scribbled into, not just trying to capture what was, but also writing detailed character profiles for my many imaginary friends, a clique of well-dressed teenagers led by, I am horrified to admit, an imaginary girl named Acoreya, who was an angel of the non-religious variety, who looked as you might imagine, quite a lot like me.

My daughter’s relationship with reality is sturdier. When we walk places, which we do always, living in the city and me not being a driver, I have to ask her where we are and how to get where we’re going because I honestly don’t know. She’s seven, and I could take this as something for me to be embarrassed about but I choose instead to not be ashamed of my own shortcomings, just proud of her ability to counteract them. Parenthood can ease or amplify shame, and when possible I choose to let it be a salve.

She likes chess and math. She likes facts, which she integrates easily, speedily. This week she reported that the bread we baked was under-baked, because Jacques Torres, host of Nailed It who she considers a major celebrity, said something about holes in bread denoting underbaked-ness. She told me this with such confidence I didn’t bother to google, even though I did not remember Jacques Torres saying any such thing. When we visited the Museum of Natural History last summer, she told me all about cookie cutter sharks and bioluminesence. I’m not sure she’s even particularly interested in the ocean, but she’d come across some facts while listening to audiobooks, so of course she’d memorized them. Over the course of my education, I have done research projects on hippopotamuses, Eva Perón, and Theatre of Cruelty. But I could really only tell you, now, how those subjects made me feel, and what else they remind me of, how they connect together in my head in interesting ways. When it comes to anything concrete, I come up empty. It’s not how my brain works. I understand things, generally speaking but I don’t know facts.

Basically, if you are putting together a team for a trivia night, you’re going to want my daughter. Whereas I, avid bookworm, person with a masters degree, adult human navigating the world for over 40 years, cannot be relied upon to know, well, really anything in particular.

I don’t mean this as an insult to myself. I have equal fondness for my loose grip on reality as I do my daughter’s ferocious adherence to it. I find it all beautiful. Of course I do. I find most things beautiful.

Interestingly enough, and for I think wildly different reasons, so does my daughter.

I operate in feelings and vibes, and in the ability to make things up, to invent worlds, to come up with, for instance, a place called GlumbleGlibble where children meet up with lively, glittery, real life versions of their beloved stuffies to help them through life’s trickiest moments. I can imagine, with ease, a rainbow mud slide as a place to cement a best friendship, a pineapple portal that moves children from one world to the other, and a class at school called Me-Being. I wrote in a game called ice cream chess, for the books set in GlumbleGlibble, and my daughter looked worried when I mentioned it, trying to understand if the pawns and rooks would be in the shape of ice cream and what would happen if the ice cream melted, did it effect the rules of the game? She looked suspicious, concerned, a little, that I had brought my whimsy to her serious game.

When my younger daughter started playing a game where she imagined herself going to work, carrying a shopping bag, sunglasses, and a prized sticker, my older daughter found it difficult to play along. “But you’re not going to work,” she said, not meanly, just frankly. “And you need shoes on if you’re going to work. You’re not a grownup.”

My younger daughter was unfazed. “Bye bye, I go to work now!” she said, walking to the bathroom, then returning moments later, beaming “I back from work!”

“But work lasts all day,” my older daughter said, truly flummoxed. Even as a toddler, she liked art projects, cooking projects, legos. She likes what is literal, what is really there. She was not a haver of imaginary friends.

But damn if she doesn’t know what a monopoly is and how that’s related to the Rockefeller family. Damn if it doesn’t fill her with happiness, to know how to tell time, how to count things by 2s or 5s or 10s. She lives for a schedule, andcan understand and know forever, immediately, the rules of any and every game. Recently, I tried to read her a kid’s version of the Iliad. She seemed antsy and disengaged, and I figured it wasn’t fun enough, that she wasn’t quite ready for it. “No,” she said, “it’s just that I know all of this from Greeking Out,” referencing one of her favorite podcasts which tells the stories of Greek mythologies. She knows each story fluently. I have listened to them all dozens of times alongside her, and have also extensively researched them when I wrote THE WIDELY UNKNOWN MYTH OF APPLE AND DOROTHY. But at the end of the day, I just know those stories make me feel cozy and alive and curious, some of my favorite ways to feel. I like Echo and Narcissus, even though I’d have to read the myth again today to remember the details. I love most of all Pandora, for opening the box. I wear a necklace featuring her around my neck as a reminder for the way bringing truth to light is important, but even that beloved story, in all its detailed glory is still as elusive as everything else. It’s an excited feeling, a story that reminds me of other stories, a way of getting across the complicated truth of the world. Because while I struggle to grasp facts, I care a great deal about truth. And beauty, of course.

But my daughter finds just as much beauty in the way she sees the world, in her way of understanding truth— as a collection of concrete facts that live inside her, that she can collect like postage stamps, like tiny spoons. They make her feel as safe as my dreamy way of engaging with the world makes me feel.

And in this way, she reminds me how to walk home after gymnastics, always knowing which streets to take, and she surprises me with facts about the world, and I confuse her with my ungrounded but brightly colored impressions of it, and we both fall in love with it in our own ways.

Because it is this, really, that we have in common, and that I am sure lives in my younger daughter too, with her exuberant goofball sensibilities, her way of finding jokes in absolutely everything. We love the world. We love it for the way it is, and the way it feels and the way it makes us laugh.

We love it, each of us, in the way that makes the most sense to us. Concrete facts and dreamy ideas and impish jokes, big truths and tiny details. We all just want to feel those connections— with truth, with facts, with each other.

I hope you have your own way, too.

NEWS

• The first book in my new ZOOMI AND ZOE series comes out in a few weeks, June 3rd, and if you haven’t ordered for yourself or a beloved reader, aged 4-8, please do! Preorder help authors a great deal, and this book has glitter on the cover and the aforementioned ice cream chess and pineapple portal. It’s zany and silly and trying to speak to kid’s feelings and sense of fun all at once.

• I will be doing a storytime event to celebrate the launch of ZOOMI AND ZOE on June 14th at 11:30, at the Montague Street Books Are Magic. I hope you and your kids can join me there!

• The second book in the series will be out in August, and is the one that makes me laugh out loud the most, because Zoomi and Zoe decide they need to start a baby school for their new baby siblings, since they don’t like the stinky, crying, blobby ways brand new babies behave. Please consider preordering that one as well!

• The second book in the series also received a STARRED REVIEW from School Library Journal: “Haydu is readily attuned to young peoples’ feelings about life’s big transitions…The story is enhanced by the author’s thoughtful sensitivity in expressing human emotions. Appert’s lovely digital watercolor illustrations depict the gentle magic of the world, and will help readers follow the plot. VERDICT A solid, heartwarming addition to early chapter book collections.”

• My new middle grade novel, THE ORDINARY AND EXTRAORDINARY AUDEN GREENE is coming out February 3rd, 2026, and you can also preorder that and learn more about it— the copy says “The magical beasts of Impossible Creatures meet the body-swap of Freaky Friday, set in a world as fantastical as Wicked’s Oz!” Beautiful cover forthcoming!

• I hope to have more to share very soon about my upcoming debut novel for grown-ups, MOTHERS AND OTHER STRANGERS, which will be coming out next year from Little, Brown!

Recommendations

• I took my father to go see this on Broadway last week as part of our long standing tradition of going to musicals together. I’m not sure I’ve seen better performances… ever? And in particular the last song of the first act was so moving, so beautiful, and so deeply felt. If you have a chance to see these brilliant performers, I suggest you try to go.

• I am a newish subscriber to Youngna Park’s substack, Making it Work. Her recent post, Four Vignettes on Urgency spoke to me in particular.

• As a long time watcher of reality TV dating shows, I have recently turned to reality TV game shows after discovering The Traitors. While of course The Traitors is perfection, I have tested out some of the other new dupes, and I am sorry to say I like them all, including this one, which is ridiculous and fun and escapist in a way that only reality TV can be.

• Lastly, I had been waiting for the right time to read this one by a favorite writer, and it really was engrossing, beautiful, and pointed in ways that really had me breathless. A very special, raw, brilliant memoir.