Sunday, October 17, 2010

Beautiful things

If I could paint, I would paint a picture of Zoe's growing imagination. It would be Dali-like, with beautiful images melting into one another, with some Van Gough starry nights thrown in.

It's fun to see a person's imagination develop, so fun that I thought I'd share it.

One night, when Zoe asked why it was getting dark outside, Charles said, "Because the monkeys are eating the sun."

It was silliness at first, but the two of them have developed the idea over time. Now we know that the monkeys eat the sun at night because they've played all day and they're tired, so they want to put the light out. In the morning, when they wake up and are ready to play again, the monkeys poop out the sun, and that's why you see the sun rise. There are networks of monkeys living around the world; it just happens that one group lives in a house on our block, and another in a house by Zoe's school.

As for the moon, it's the mice that eat it every morning - the moon is made out of cheese, you know.

Zoe is so young that she believes that Mickey Mouse and his clubhouse are real, and every morning she marvels when the magic words make the clubhouse appear on his show. Tinkerbell lives in a Lego "house" which Zoe built. Dora and Diego are her friends.

When my dog Quentin plays chase with Zoe, running behind her around the backyard, he is playing Follow the Leader; Molly (a Dalmatian) and Quentin (a hound dog) are sister and brother.

Two chairs next to each other are a truck or an airplane; Zoe frequently travels to Oklahoma, New Jersey and North Carolina, to the homes of many people she loves.

If Zoe doesn't want to climb up a chair, it's because she doesn't "have strong legs," and a bar on the floor is there "for children to jump over." If we've lost something outside, we use "tubes" (typically a piece of grass) that help us find it. "Here's your tube, Mommy, so you can find Quen's ball."

It's a beautiful world in which Zoe lives, and I hope that her vivid imaginings are indications of a creative life ahead of her. In the meantime, I'll keep enjoying the things she says and believes, and maybe I'll believe some for myself.

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