What if...?

I sometimes wonder where I'd be today if things were different. I suppose we all do. And it's not because I am unhappy, like the customer I chatted with yesterday who confided in me, "If I had somewhere to go, I'd be gone. I'm so sick of my husband's shit." In fact, I am one of the happiest people I know, and I am profoundly grateful, but still, I am often curious what I would have done if my childhood passions were encouraged.
I am reading a book called Animal, Vegetable, Mineral by Barbara Kingsolver. In it she talks about her 7 year old daughter’s love of chickens. I'm paraphrasing here, but the story goes something like this; One of the girls chickens died and the child was grief stricken. Her mother said, "It's just a chicken!" The girl replied, "You don't understand, I love my chickens as much as I love you." A while later, sensing she had hurt her mother’s feelings, she said, "If I love you a 7, I love my chickens a 6." I would have been that kind of kid.
I also loved to type. I would spend an unreasonable amount of time banging away at the electric typewriter in my fathers office, messing with carbon paper and white out and balling up my efforts into mounds of paper waste that overflowed the can. No one ever said, "Write up some stories." No childish poem I wrote was ever hung up on the fridge. What would I have done with my life if my childhood desires had been encouraged, even a little? Who knows? Maybe I would done just as I have... created a life working with animals and writing around the edges.