hanging with the banshee

My Beloved and I were up at my brother’s for New Year’s day, hanging out in our flannel jammie bottoms and Ugg boots. It’s basically de rigueur at my brother’s on New Year’s day: Flannel jammie bottoms and Ugg boots. Please do not attempt to wear actual street clothing. You will be overdressed and feel like a muttonhead.

In a stunning move, The Banshee crawled into my lap while I was sitting on the floor, turned to face me, and began describing in great detail her trip to Disneyland last week. She LOVED Pirates of the Carribean, was not the least bit scared by it — and she’s four. If you grew up in Southern California, as I did, you basically have that ride memorized. You know every single swashbuckling moment. So as she described it — um, inch by watery inch — I knew exactly what she was talking about. At one point, her little voice got all loud and quavery, like every Jacob Marley I have ever seen, and she said, grabbing my cheeks for emphasis:

“TEE~EE TEE~EE~E!! THE SKEL~E~T-O~N~N~N PIR~A~A~A~TE WAA~AS DR~I~I~IN~NK~I~I~N~NN~G I~NNT~O HIS SKKE~E~LE~TO~O~N~NNN!!!!”

Her eyes were bulging blue as she wailed this into my face. She may not have been terrified, but I was.

And you know who always gets blamed for these theatrics? Me. ME. Lil’ ol ME! What did I do??

Sheesh. People.

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Later at nap time, she begged me to come upstairs and read the book we had brought with us as her Christmas present, When the Sky is Like Lace, a recommendation I got from Sheila’s blog, oh, a few years ago now. The Banshee loves books. LOVES ’em. When she was even younger, I’d catch her on occasion dragging them around as if they were toys or babbling along, pretending to read them. Now I was a little concerned that some of this book may be over her head, but, again, she’s — empirically — very very bright. And I’m not just being biased, although I am boasting, which is empirically gross.

We began.

I said the name of the book.

“What does that mean, Tee Tee, ‘the sky is like lace'”?

I didn’t want to explain it, not to be withholding, but for her to experience it herself, so I said, “Let’s read the book and see.”

She snuggled up to me. As the book went on, I watched her face, her reaction. She was very still. Wide-eyed. On certain pages, she pointed to the things named in the text. Things I didn’t think she’d even know, like “chartreuse” or “clam-digging.” But she knew. It’s a brilliant book. A gorgeous book. On the very last page, there’s an illustration with this huge purple sky and silvery white clouds. The Banshee just stared at it for a moment, then whispered, “Look, Tee Tee. The sky is like lace.”

Yep, kid. I knew you’d get it.

Even later, when she woke up from her nap, she begged for the book again, climbing into my lap with it. At one point, the book talks about the grass being like “gooseberry jam” and soft like the velvet of an old violin case. I stroked the page as I read, the part of the page with the gooseberry lawn, and The Banshee said, “Tee Tee, I’d want to be barefoot so I could feel the velvet violin.”

And I can’t describe it exactly, that moment with The Banshee, but it’s like I felt something dawning, something sinking in. I blinked some sudden tears from my eyes.

Then I kept reading.