The bulk of this post belongs to A. Yesterday afternoon we were driving home from the birthday party of a friend. Reading is by a decisive margin her favorite activity, but she had no books. So, as we sometimes do, we agreed to tell each other stories. I asked her to go first, and she filled the remainder of the drive with the tale that follows. After we got home, I wrote it down as quickly as I could, using her language as precisely as I could recall. If that strains credulity, let me briefly say that her use of language remains precocious, which I’ll demonstrate with two examples from Friday.
1). When we stopped in a bagel shop she said, with a glance at the establishment’s weak, aged chandeliers, “This room is ill-lit.”
2). As we walked through Castle Williams, an 18th-century fort on Governors Island that had been converted during the Civil War to a prison holding Confederate soldiers, a park ranger noted that 60 prisoners would be crammed into a small-ish room with only a barrel for a shared toilet. After she’d processed that, A asked me, “Did they get mattresses?” No. “Pillows?” No. “A bottom sheet?” No. “A blanket?” Yes. “Was it thin?” Yes. “Raggedy?” Yes. “Threadbare?” Yes, I’d say it likely was.
Here’s A’s story, which I’ll call “Princess Marita and The Pebblestone.”
Once upon a time, there was a princess named Princess Marita. Princess Marita went to Sunday school, which started at 9 o’clock in the morning. There were terrible punishments for students who came late, so she hurried from home after calling quickly “Goodbye, goodbye!” to her mama and papa, the king and queen. She made it to Sunday school on time and had a good lesson. When she returned, only her mama was home. Her mama told her that her papa had fallen ill, gone to the hospital, and died that afternoon.
Some time later, her mama went out on a date, and Marita heard a voice inside her, telling her to go on a quest. She knew who the voice was. And when she started off, she knew she was entering a world of different time -- like in Narnia, when Lucy can stay for a week and return through the wardrobe door and find that only a few minutes have passed. So she set out on her quest: to find the pebblestone, guarded by a fierce boar and lying in the center of a red violet in the middle of a field of red violets.
She called for her fairy friend, who gave her a velvet-lined coach and two fine horses. She rode all through the night, and though the horses were tired she urged them on, and they understood, knowing the importance of her quest. She arrived and saw the boar guarding a cave. The boar never slept and could power itself by moving only its eyes. She waited one whole day and one whole night, but the boar did not leave. But the next day the boar set off to hunt for food, and Marita knew she must act quickly. So she hurried into the cave and found the field of violets, where she searched and searched. Finally she found it: the red violet with the purple pebblestone at its center. She quickly took the pebblestone and rode in her carriage back to her land, where she found her mama’s date still had an hour to go.
Marita said a magic spell over the pebblestone, and her papa came back to life. So when her Mama returned she found Marita and her papa waiting for her, and the family was overjoyed to be together again. And they lived happily ever after.
