Our life..in review

Madelena suffers the fate of many second children; fewer photos, the absence of baby or brag books, and "pre-owned" toys simply scrubbed down for her enjoyment. But she seems not to notice, and in fact eschews any new toys given to her. Her favorite toy at the moment is a small, dusty plastic bag filled with leftover plastic bears from a long-ago birthday party; the bag is taped shut, with grime collecting on the curling edges of the tape. She carries this bag around like a prized possession, often placing it in her bag-lady shopping cart filled with other random items from around the house. Occasionally I will find her singing into the bag, like a microphone, closing with "Thank you, San Francisco!" Last night she was dancing with the bag, making it sing along to Move It; afterwards she placed it lovingly in her tattered box of crap. The box contains, in addition to the dusty bag, half-torn stickers, crumpled playing cards, dried up stamps, a fuzzy pipe cleaner and a car missing one wheel. 

I have tried to interest her in the few new toys given to her over the last year - a MacClaren stroller, an alligator xylophone, beautiful Latina dolls with shining dark eyes and glowing brown skin. On Christmas morning she awoke to these dolls, strapped in her new stroller and ready for a walk. She screamed with delight - "MIRA!!!" - and promptly dumped the dolls on the floor and replaced them with her omnipresent panda, one of Shawn Joaquin's shoes and an old cup of chunky milk she had carefully hidden in her toy basket. Now I occasionally find the dolls in the oven or pushed into the corner of the kids' tent, only to be used as weapons or pillows. The stroller is used merely as a replacement for her shopping cart or as a means to push her big brother around and eventually crash into the wall with his head or feet hitting first.  

The upside of all of this - head injuries to Shawn Joaquin aside - is that our toy budget is small and usually used for educational but fun toys for Shawn Joaquin that she will eventually inherit. The bad news is that we worry that she will someday end up pushing a shopping cart down the street and living in a cardboard box, and be not at all bothered by her fate. Perhaps our best investment for her is not Gymboree or art classes, but  survival skills class that includes "how to urinate in a public place without being caught" or "Under-Bridge Habitats: Not Just for Trolls". She may be a bag lady, but thanks to us, she'll be the best bag lady there is. 

The chicken crossed the road

As a self-proclaimed future writer of pirate books, Shawn Joaquin has started to tell tall tales. Not fibs, but actual epic romances along the lines of Beowulf and Grendel. Men...or chickens...who set out on journeys that end up involving witches, Indians, bears, one-eyed foxes, genies, gods and monsters. Most tales are set in Arabia, India or Africa and are never less than 20 minutes in length...without a breath. In each story someone dies, often multiple times, yet in the end they are alive again and anyone who was once evil is somehow redeemed and becomes good. 

After about 10 minutes I usually find my mind wandering, though I don't want to discourage this new storytelling streak - I love that his imagination is so rich and his ability to express it so expansive. So I try to concentrate as he tells his story each night at dinner. 

"So...once upon a time there was this chicken who wanted to cross the road. The chicken was kind of a crazy chicken with ojos locos, and he was very hungry. As night fell, he crossed the road with the bear to get some ice cream. After they had their ice cream at a little shack, he and the bear went to the Indian village, and they decided that they should be Indians TOO. So they had a ceremony and gave him Indian clothes and he put them on like this [demonstrating quick change skills] and the elders gave him a new name...Food....Super Hero. His secret power is that he can turn ROCKS into PIZZAS. And they made a lot of friends. Like She Who Builds Houses, and she could build houses faster than ANYONE. And Dark Cloud, who made giant storms that washed away cities that looked like Cairo. And Table.... Super Hero...who...turned people into big tables if they were bad.  During the ceremony, all the friends danced and did a funky monkey dance. They then were attacked by some genies, who took them to the river and threw them in. They weren't EVIL genies, but they were confused and were having some bad behavior. Suddenly, a crocodile with one green eye and one white eye [a recurring theme] tried to eat them, and the genies, who were now good and feeling bad about what they did, saved them. But everyone died anyway, and then the genies did a secret spell and put them on the flying towels and took them to Africa. Then..."

At about five minutes in, I feel my face sagging and my interest flagging. My mind wanders off as I consider whether painting brows above my own might make me appear more interested or just surprised. I try to inject "oh wow" and "no way" at appropriate moments, but really, I am ready to crawl under the table by the time we reach the 20 minute mark. Suddenly I tune back in as I hear "Russia" enter the story.

"...and now that they're in Russia, they go to lots of restaurants. Russia has the best food in the world, and restaurants in all the towns and next to all of the houses. They..."

I interject: Shawn Joaquin, how do you know all this about Russia? Did you see it on TV or read it in a book?

"Mama," he says with impatience, "I just use my IMAGINATION. That's what WRITERS do. Okay, so then in RUSSIA the PIRATES came and capture the bear and the Indian chicken and..."

And so it goes for another 30 minutes. In the meantime, She Who Does Not Like To Be Ignored is throwing food at me or singing at the top of her lungs, I am wondering if Flight of the Conchords was DVR'd, and the dog - the best person in the house - is listening attentively to Shawn Joaquin's story. Ears cocked, head tilted and brow furrowed, worried that the Chicken Indian Food Super Hero might be in danger. Or perhaps she is just waiting for Shawn Joaquin to drop some more food as his excitement continues to increase and his fork skills consequently decrease. 

None of it matters. Shawn Joaquin is caught up in his own world of stories, his imagination that will serve him well in his life, whether he does indeed become a writer of pirate books or not. It is this same imagination that will someday save him from insanity as he sits in long corporate meetings, drive him to become a creative or simply a creator of things, or merely provide fodder for the stories that he will tell his own children as he tucks them into bed each night.  In the meantime I will not dampen his enthusiasm; if need be, I will put scotch tape on my forehead to lift my brow and provide a look of constant interest, and practice maintaining eye contact while making lists in my head and dreaming of bedtime.