(Let me start, actually, with noting that the odd and unappealing/slightly janky photo included here is an image of a door stop in our bathroom. While laying down in the bathroom, getting dried off after a bath, our child looked up and started to make the clip-clop sound of a horse. Puzzled, I followed her gaze and realized that she was connecting this shape to the shape of a horse hoof. So interesting! And now, to the blog post content..)

Apparently, French culture assumes/expects the child will go to sleep early so the parents can have time together to sip wine and converse like real adults. Also, apparently, the children actually follow these assumptions/expectations. Clearly our household is not French. We can spend up to one hour with our child each and every night of the week. Fun? No. Not really, but when I’m putting her down, I try to make it interesting. 

I’ve started working with my sense of imagination to come up with stories to tell our daughter  about. The story began with a horse named Daisy. (Our child seems to like horses and making the clip clop noise they make when they’re trotting down pavement. Welcome to Amish county where horses aren’t abnormal mammals to have sharing space with cars.) 

No. We don’t know any horses named Daisy. I just needed a name and that one popped into my mind. I tend to ramble in my words  to her when she’s fussy and I need her to calm down. If she hears my voice, then mostly she’s ok. So I start to share a story, but usually I have no idea what form the story will take  until the words form in my mouth. They kinda piece themselves together to form a very, very lame story.

I’ve sat with Daisy for three or four nights now. At one point I realized I needed more than just a horse. Coming up with stories just about a horse is difficult. Try it! Since I was running out of activities for a horse to engage I knew I needed a little girl. I thought I’d call her Daffodil, but that wasn’t right. I didn’t figure out her name until the next night. Amelia. Amilia is the star of the story now and Daisy is her favorite being. Amelia has a friend who lives far away. Her name is Lydia. Amelia, Lydia and Daisy. The storyline is still very dull, but it seems to calm our little girl down. Let me tell you tonight’s storyline.

Amelia was playing in the orchard when she saw Daisy standing off in the distance, alone. I don’t know whose horse Daisy is, but she doesn’t belong to Amelia’s family. So when Amelia slips through the fence to walk towards Daisy, she is engaging in a form of small-scale rebellion in her own innocent way. She walks to the fallen tree (our child doesn’t know what a log is yet) that Daisy is next to and climbs up it. She gently pulls Daisy towards her and Daisy lets her climb on her back. Daisy proceeds to trot Amelia around the field and when she senses that Amelia is done, she returns to the log and Amelia gets off

When Amelia returns home she finds her mama in the kitchen making apple crisp. (For some reason my stories so far seem to highlight apples.) Amelia asks if she can make the topping so her mama cuts the apples and Amelia jumps in to help. They put the dessert in the oven with meat and potatoes and invite Lydia’s family over for supper. This happens to mean a long table spread out and two largish families eating together. Upon finishing the meal, Amelia helps clear the table and then runs into the yard with her friend to talk and laugh and play with a ball.

The end.

Not too exciting. But for not being very exciting, I surprised myself. The storyline, though barely one, is very rural, old fashioned and Anglo focused. Still, it was enough to get our child to sleep. Some days that’s all I care about. I also surprised myself by recognizing that my capacity for imagining is stunted! 

When I was young I used to pretend all the time. My favorite form of pretend was that I was an orphan running away from bad guys. Me and a friend needed to make our own soup, find our own bedding and survive alone while evading the ones who were coming after us. I realize now that we never really had an idea of what those guys would do once they found us. I only know that we always managed to avoid them and we were exceedingly content with our grass-leaf-stick-stone soup we made in a hollowed out stump.

And now, look at me! I can barely come up with a plot line. I wonder if sometimes the role of a parent is to learn how to be a child again. Stop swearing. Check your manners. Show kindness. Relearn to imagine and create. Make your own fun rather than buying it. It’s work sometimes, but if we’ve done it before as children, then we can do it again as adults.