Improvisatory Play as a Mindful Practice

By Fred Marshall, MD

I never met my grandfather, who died a year or so before I was born, but somehow I felt that he was a dear friend of mine and an excellent confidant. As I write this, I am sitting at his roll-top desk, which I inherited on the death of my own parents.  He had been a young officer in World War I, and my grandmother had joined him in Europe after the Armistice.  Upon returning and being decommissioned, they settled into a quiet domestic life in a tidy brick house in Denver, walking distance to Elitch Gardens, at that time the home of the tallest wooden roller-coaster in the United States.