We’re vacationing at Lake Powell, and Elizabeth is hiding behind the wall of our hotel-room patio, waiting for Jim to return from an errand so she can scare him. She turns to me and asks, “Should I say ‘raaar’ or ‘boo’?”
We’re getting ready to leave the house and trying to get the kids out to the garage and into the car. Jim tells Elizabeth to hurry.
Her reply? “I’ll run like the weather!”
Although Michael usually eats his lunch in the school cafeteria, the fall camp requires that we pack a lunch for him. On this morning I drive all the way to school, and as we pull into the driveway to drop him off he announces that he has forgotten his lunch at home. I turn the car around and scold him, telling him that he needs to pay more attention; he’s going to be late for camp and I’m going to be late for work. I believe my complaints are falling on deaf ears, but Michael suddenly interjects, “When Carson forgot his lunch, his mother didn’t get mad at him.”
Elizabeth is playing with her miniature Disney dolls and asks me to play, too. I pick up one of the tiny dolls and begin to talk in a silly voice, speaking for the little princess I’m holding. “‘Hi! My name is Belle! My prince is named Jim, and he has two wonderful children named Michael and Elizabeth.’”
Elizabeth stops what she is doing, looks at me sternly, and says, “Kate! You have to pretend! It can’t be real!”
I have an oversized chair in my bedroom, and I like to sit in it and read, my legs curled up beneath me, a blanket over my lap. The children know they can often find me in the chair on a Sunday afternoon and will often seek me out there, asking if I will come and get them a snack or put in a movie for them.
Michael’s homework requires that he reads for a minimum of fifteen minutes each night. I find that if I read with him, he will be more inclined to do his assignment without complaining. Sometimes we read at the kitchen counter, sometimes at the kitchen table, and sometimes on the sofa.
One evening Michael asked me if we could read together in “the reading chair.”
“Which chair is that?” I asked.
“The one in your bedroom.”
It’s my birthday, and as we walk to the bus stop, Michael asks, “Kate, how old are you?”
“Twenty-nine,” I say.
“But you can’t be twenty-nine; you were twenty-nine last year!”
“No, I’m really forty-six,” I confess.
“That’s old!” he replies. After a few seconds of pondering, he asks, “How old is Daddy?”
“He’s forty-two.”
“That can’t be right!” he insists. “He’s supposed to be older than you!”
It’s Christmas morning, and Jim goes up to get the children to come down and open their gifts. Michael races down the stairs, around the Christmas tree, and right past the shiny new four-wheeled, kid-sized all-terrain vehicle parked beside it. He stops five feet past both and looks at the plate and glass that he left on the ledge in the living room the night before. He turns to us, points to the empty plate, and says, “Santa was here! The cookies are gone!”
