Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Encounters With Children

One
A beautiful little girl with long blond pigtails, dressed in a Dorothy costume complete with ruby slippers, stood next to me in the bead store. She was accompanied by her mother and her adorable baby sister, who was riding in a stroller.

While her mother browsed, she took strings of shiny colorful beads and held them up to the baby, who was tucking her chin and drooling, trying to get them in her mouth.

“Look at these, Mommy!” Dorothy said. “The baby needs these.”

“Um hmm,” said her mother.

“She does!” she insisted. “Babies love to be stylish.”


Two
Maggie, my daughter, babysits brothers who are seven and five. One day they were arguing and hitting each other, so she separated them and suggested they draw a picture of how angry they were.

The oldest boy drew himself striking his brother, with big black scrawls all around.

“Wow, you are mad!” Mags commented. “Now can you draw what you could do next?” The boy drew himself and his brother having a conversation, then shaking hands.

“That’s great!” Maggie encouraged. “Now let’s do something else and let all of the bad feelings go.”

A minute later she noticed the older boy hadn’t come back to play; he was still drawing. She went to admire the final picture. He’d drawn his brother in a castle, without a window or door. And the castle was burning.

Takes a while for all those bad feelings to be gone.


Three
We were walking the dogs at the park, and a little boy named Roman stopped to pet them. Roman, who had just turned three, was wearing pale orange nail polish, just like his older sister. (“He wanted to paint them for his birthday party,” his father explained.)

Roman stroked our little dogs gently. “They’re soft,” he said.

Then he said, “Their tails come off.”

Well, no, Roman. Really, they don’t.