“The secret is to relax and let the wind blow through your hair. Can you feel it now?”
At seven and the world before you, it is good to listen to what’s around. To stop and open your eyes and ears.
That’s what my seven-year-old daughter told me.
There she is, up there. She’s sat in the middle of the sandy lane in the forest behind our house on the coast. She’s sat Indian style looking at the forest and the blue sky and the sunshine streaming down through the pine trees and into her outstretched arms and open palms that rest on her legs. She gazes at it all and gently whispers, “Oommmm… oommmm…”
Then she looks up at me with a gentle face and says, “I like the way it feels when the wind blows through my hair.”
I think I might give it a try.
“Fire! Where, where?”
My four-year-old son loves firefighters and fighting fires, especially with hoses. He waters the plants for us – and puts out fires for himself, his imagination afire with thoughts of fires here and there and seemingly everywhere. He races to put out the flames in the lavenders and then the rosemary bushes. Then the pines. And wait, over there! Quick! The fire’s spread to the furs. He races down with the hose to put it out. Now he’s off again. The azaleas are on fire. Quick! Hurry, hurry!
He’s our very own firefighter.
Then one morning while we were upstairs getting ready to go to the beach he discovered a fire downstairs in the kitchen. It began on the stove and spread rapidly to the microwave and then mummy’s tea box. Quick! He raced to put it out and followed the blaze as it jumped to the bathroom mirror! Quick! Hurry, hurry!
We came downstairs to find him exhausted on the sofa. A morning of firefighting had left him tired out.
And it had left us out of a full canister of spray-on sunblock.
The imagination is a wonderful thing, we thought as we followed the path of the fire through the kitchen and to the bathroom with a stop at the dining-room sideboard – and as we thought what in blazing hell can we use to clean up the greasy aftermath because the vinegar just isn’t cutting it.
There is a giant in the bathroom.
There once lived a monster of immense proportions and an unquenchable appetite for children, dinosaurs and fruit (heaps of it) in the shadows of our bathroom. It haunted my four-year-old son so much that he could only use the toilet in the dark, marring his already ill marksmanship.
Bim Bam Boom – that was the monster.
My son rifled off terrifying descriptions of the beast, and even I hesitated at using his bathroom. Better the other one down the hall.
To my son’s relief we moved and Bim Bam Boom didn’t follow. My son checked the bathroom first, and said, “Nope, no Bim Bam Boom.”
Phew!
His marksmanship improved.
So too his guts.
For in this new house on the coast a giant came to dwell in his very bathroom. “He eats kids,” my son told me.
“Aren’t you scared?” I asked.
“Yeah!”
“Well, what do you do?”
“Run and hide.”
“Where to?”
“Your bedroom. In the bed, under the covers.”
“What if he finds you?”
“Hide.”
“Oh,” I said.
“And then yell for help,” he said.
“And what will I do when I come to help?
“Get rid of it.”
I think for a moment that maybe it would be wise to move again.