Flights of fancy

Edith is plunging into literary analysis.

The other night she had me read a chapter of Peter Pan before bed; I chose the section in which Peter first teaches the children to fly and takes them to Neverland. (For those who might be familiar with the Disney movie or the Broadway play but not with the book, know that Barrie's original is a much more detailed and engaging story...if also one that raises even more questions about the emotional health of the author.)

When we finished that chapter Edith requested one from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I went to find it on the bookshelf and was just reflecting that it was a night for fantasy stories when Edith, evidently thinking along the same lines, broke in:

"The two stories are kind of the same, because they are both about a magical land that children go to. But they're kind of different, too, because in this one [indicating Peter Pan] they already know all about the land and they have a guide to take them there and show them around, but in that one they don't know anything about the land and they get there by themselves by accident and don't understand anything that's happening."

I know I'm her mother and am biased, but for my money it sounded as good as any initial brainstorming for a freshman writing seminar essay. I still want to read the rest of the paper.

***

We need to capture one of Edith's spontaneously invented stories on tape. Today we got one about Belle, who has many brothers and sisters. The problem was, Belle was the strongest of them all, and that made the other brothers and sisters jealous. She could pull a baby's crib across a room with a rope, even if it was 90-feet tall. [Edith proceeded to tie a cloth tape measure to one end of Alice's crib and start to pull it across the room.] Then one day her father, Jesse, asked Belle to go defeat the family's enemies, the Philistines. So she went out to the field of battle, lassoed the biggest Philistine, and pulled him over. Edith made sure we understood that this was different than hitting him between the eyes with a stone--pulling him over is different than knocking him over.

I should reassure her the copyright has expired on that one.

***

We're halfway through our course of parent-child swim lessons. There are just three kids in Edith's class (the advantage of taking a class at 8:30am on Saturdays). The extra attention doesn't necessarily translate into more intensive learning time, though. Our half hour in the pool goes something like this:

"Okay, pull with your hands! Pull your bricks through the water, one after the other!"

"Mama, want to act out a story with me, about the night the lagoon howled?"

"The night the lagoon howled?"

"You're going to pull your way through the tunnel. Pull, pull!"

"The night the lagoon howled. It was a mermaid lagoon, and one night there was a panther in the woods near the water, and he howled."

"Can you go through the tunnel? Pull with your hands!"

"No. I don't feel like it."

"Edith, can the mermaid swim through the tunnel at the edge of the lagoon?"

"Uh huh."

"Good job! Now let's lie on our backs and kick with our feet. Look up at the new lights on our ceiling! How many lights do we have?"

"Honey, I've got you. Can you lie on your back?"

"The crocodiles are at the bottom. The mermaid needs to swim away."

"Edith, can you lie on your back?"

"No, I'm cold. Mama, let's go swimming for awhile. You're a mermaid."

"We're in swim class right now."

"Oh, yeah. Mama, you're a mermaid."

***

The biggest fear of the moment seems to be not crocodiles but fire. We've been getting lots of comments and questions about fire in the last week. They may have been prompted by a faulty fire alarm at school, judging by the story Edith told me today in the car:

"The fire alarm went off at school."

"And was it a drill? Did you go outside? There wasn't really a fire."

"I think it just went off by accident. Sometimes it was just going off by accident! And when it went off Torrey cried. And oh my gosh, Mom, Ms. Kate asked Torrey if he wanted some pizza and grapes, and he said he didn't. And when I realized Torrey didn't want pizza and grapes because he was so scared, I started to a little get upset, too. Do you know that Kyra goes to dance class?"

So we've been getting lots of questions and comments about fire, as well as stories that involve putting out fires. We' re not entirely sure yet how to reassure her. Unfortunately tonight we were at a church family's house for a birthday dinner, and another guest asked what had happened to the house next door. Before I could get Edith out of the room we were hearing the the story of how the next-door neighbor's house burned to the ground, everything lost within half an hour of the start of a dryer fire, one of the worst fires the fire department had ever seen, the family got out but the cat didn't, nothing left at all.

There's definitely a downside to an active imagination. At least children's books don't include many stories of banks nationalizing and universities freezing hires.

***

Belle builds a log cabin