"Mama, will you make the cake for my wedding?"
The picture above is far from the best I’ve shot of the Twins, but it perfectly illustrates my story. It was taken at the very moment in question.
I met several members of my family at the State Fair at lunchtime today. The Twins were there. I think they were the two tiniest people actually walking around as opposed to being in strollers. They were turned away from one kiddie ride for being too short — “Maybe next year,” the carnie told them.
Just before I left them to head back into town, they were admiring decorated cakes submitted for Fair competitions. While Twin B was still looking, Twin A turned to her mother — who is into cake decorating as a hobby — and asked, “Mama, will you make the cake for my wedding?
“Of course,” my daughter said. “Who are you going to marry?”
The sweatheart started to gaze off into the distance, but before she could say anything, my wife (who had been on this subject with her before) cut in:
“You’re NOT waiting around for Prince Charming. Remember, we talked about that. You’ll make your own fortune in the world.”
Poor baby. All they want to wear is princess dresses — and tutus. I don’t know how my wife, or my daughter, or whoever dressed them this morning even got them both into jeans — perhaps because they were matched with pink tops. Twin A recently refused to wear shirt-and-pants style pajamas any more, causing my daughter to order a new nightgown by overnight delivery. Because, you see, that’s what girls wear.
But I think my wife is trying to keep the child from making the mistake she made. She knew better, but I was just so dashing, riding in and swooping her away like that…
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You go, Miz J. Good gramma!
I learned more last night about why my wife reacted that way.
The Twins, who are 3 and a half, have this “Sleeping Beauty” game they play. It involves lying down with eyes closed and a dreamy expression. Ask what they’re doing, and they explain that they’re waiting for Prince Charming. Then they will further explain, “I’ve been asleep for 100 years.”
That’s why my wife has been having this talk with them.
Their little cousin, my elder son’s child, who is a few weeks shy of 2 (here’s one of my favorite pictures of her, from last year), has taken to imitating them. A few days ago my wife took them all to a park, and our baby started to lie back on a park bench with a far-away look.
My wife nipped that in the bud, trying to interest her in something more active. Fortunately, with my youngest granddaughter, that’s not hard.
I just take delight in all of them — the little three, and the one who’s old enough to read the blog (so I seldom mention her, lest I embarrass her). But my wife feels more of a responsibility for training them up in the way that they should go.
A powerful, intelligent, independent woman friend in Columbia says she recently watched the Cinderella movie with her daughter-in-law and pre-school granddaughter with some of the same discomfort your wife describes about Sleeping Beauty. At the end of the movie, she asked her granddaughter what she thought of Cinderella. The smart little one said, “Oh, I love her!” When asked why, she said, “Because Cinderella can do anything! She can be a writer or a doctor or anything!” Grandmother was very pleased.
At least Cinderella went off in search of her prince after cleverly adaptively reusing ordinary household items. Sleeping Beauty just lies there. I don’t recall how she came to sleep for 100 years–some sort of enchanted rose pricked her, but how did that all come about?
I love the Hayao Miyazaki “children’s” films–Kiki’s Delivery Service is a good start. Plucky heroines, and story lines that are very entertaining for an adult, beautifully drawn, painted and animated.
Strange you should mention Miyazaki, Kathryn. I was just considering updating the rest of my collection from VHS to DVD and wondering how many lunches it would cost…
DVDs are probably not the way to go–the cloud, from whence you stream things….
There’s a service I heard about on NPR that takes your CDs and digitizes them and stores them in the cloud for you. Maybe you can do that with your VHSs