I am reading “The Women’s Movement,” an essay in The White Album by Joan Didion. The year the essay was written marks the end of each piece in the book and I think that would be cool to write a book full of essays and end each with the year I wrote them. I am thinking this at 6:30 in the morning when Hadley comes out of her room, a book about Pterodactyls in her hand.
“I’m sorry I came out,” she says, “but one of my braids came lose.” She’s walking towards me holding the book with one arm folded around it and the other extending the purple elastic towards me.
“That’s OK,” I say. “I bet we can take the braids out now.” I criss-cross my legs and put Joan Didion to the side. Hadley comes close, still holding the pterodactyl book.
“Did you know that the Triassic Pterodactyls are the smallest pterodactyls ever?” Hadley tells me this as I unwind the braids and her hair springs lose.
Last night, after baths, I offered to braid the girls’ hair. As I braided, we told stories using “Tell Me A Story” cards. The idea, or the way we play, is that one person picks up a card, looks at the picture, and begins a story. Everyone playing gets a chance to continue the story using that picture until we’ve all had a chance. Then we pick a new picture and repeat. The story we told last night was about a dog named Jack who drove a car to the mountains to his birthday party where everyone at the party had a name that started with J.
Hadley’s braids are out and I tousle them a bit with my hand. “They look good,” I say. She sits on the other side of the couch and opens up her pterodactyl book. I open up Joan Didion again. I’ve underlined only this from the essay: “fiction is in most ways hostile to ideology.” I underlined it not because I agree with or understand the statement, but before Hadley came out, something struck me about those words, though I can’t remember what. I try to think about fiction being hostile to ideology when Hadley starts to tell me about pterodactyl teeth.
“They have the same teeth as whales, Mama.” This time she doesn’t ask me if I know this. Now she’s teaching me. The book is open and flat against her stomach and she’s using her hands to tell me what she knows. “Its mouth is like this,” she explains. “The bottom teeth catch the food and the top teeth chew it.”
“That’s interesting. I didn’t know that,” I say.
We sit silently for a few minutes. I think maybe I can get a few more pages read while Hadley reads but I can’t. This is not her fault, I just can’t seem to concentrate when there’s more than words in the room. Harper comes out, groggy and walking unsteadily. It’s still early for her and she looks confused.
“Mommy I had a bad dream,” she tells me and crawls into my lap, Joan Didion’s pages get bent under Harper before I have a chance to slide the book out and put in on the couch.
“I’m sorry you had a bad dream,” I say and give her a hug.
“Will you take my braids out?”
I do the same for Harper as I did for Hadley a few moments before, and Harper runs to the bathroom to see what she looks like. “Mommy, I LOVE them!”
“I’m glad,” I say, getting off the couch and walking towards the kitchen to start breakfast. Joan Didion stays next to Hadley while she studies pterodactyls. While I’m pouring juice, cutting an apple, and toasting waffles Hadley asks, “Mama?”
“Yes?”
“Can we do that again tonight? The braiding and the stories? Well, I sorta liked the braiding and you can do that again but I want to know if we can tell stories again. Can we do that again tonight?”
“Sure,” I tell her as I bring her some juice. “We can tell stories again.”
There’s something in us that craves stories, isn’t there?
There IS. Sometimes I feel like that’s my best parenting tactic.
What a great exercise in story telling to do with the girls! Hope to remember to do that with Mark when he gets old enough.
Deb, those cards are a riot. They are the game of choice in our household. 🙂