March 11, 1992 Wednesday
Laura is 7, Jasmine is 6, Margret is 4, and Trina is 1.
Recently I've been taking the hymn book up to the girls' room at bedtime and singing them a hymn or two (all verses). I suppose one advantage to having them all in one room is that they can enjoy a bedtime story and / or song while snug in their own beds -- and I only have to go through it once!
There seem to be so little opportunity to sing hymns in church anymore. I want my children to know them and feel their message and comfort as I do. My sister Dawna tells me that her husband Ed is doing this too.
I wanted the light to be dim for the girls last night so I thought I'd try telling the girls a story rather than reading one. I have little or no confidence in myself as a storyteller so I began hesitantly. To my suprise and the girls' delight a story did spill out. I began...
"Once upon a time there were three little girls."
Laura broke in, "Oh, I know this story. It's about us."
"I mean," I continued, "once upon a time there were three little boys. They lived in a far-off city named Wichitatina. Their names were Lauren, Jasper, and Mark."
Laura broke in again (noticing the similarity of the boys' names to hers and her sisters and pointed to the crib),asking "What about their baby brother?"
"They didn't have one," I explained.
I proceeded to tell what the brothers liked to play (drawing on my memories of a childhood friend of mine, Kenny W.). Then, looking at the chaos on the bedroom floor I explained how the boys liked to be outside mostly but when they came inside they liked to dump all their toys in the middle of their room and pretend it was the unnavigable ocean floor. Their mother didn't like this and told them that someday there might be an ocean earthquake and all their toys would fall into the middle of the earth and be lost forever. But the boys never believed her.
"The boys wished they could have a pet cow and they would call her Gertrude. She would crop their lawn for them so they'd never have to mow. She would eat apples off their tree and give them milk. They would ride her and climb off her back onto their swingset lookout which they called The Eagles Nest. They'd pretend the lookout was a ship."
I proceeded to tell their sea adventures.
"There was a little problem because both Jasper and Lauren thought they ought to be captain and they argued about this a lot and poor Mark was always first mate--never captain. One day they were going on about this and in such a heated dispute that only little Mark noticed the funny green color in the sky and the hush that came over the landscape. Then he heard a strange buzzing sound that soon became a roar like a train rushing past. By now the older boys were watching and listening."
"The boys knew that tornadoes often came to Wichitatina and if they ever saw one they wanted to hop on their bikes and peddle to Dorothy's house so they could catch a ride to Oz. Their mother always said this wouldn't be a good idea and that she would miss them terribly but they assured her time was different in Oz. They could be in Oz years and years and here it would be just long enough to blink your eyes. Their mother was not convinced."
"As it happened, the boys found themselves right in the center of the tornado which had set down from the sky right on their eagle's nest."
Then I told about their ride in the tornado and that the tornado set them down right at the end of the rainbow inside the pot of gold.
"They got to play in the gold as if it were a ballbath just like in the cartoons of Uncle Scrooge's money vat. They knew they could never carry that big heavy pot of gold home. Come to think of it they didn't know how they would get home. After awhile they actually got tired of playing in the gold so they climbed out to have a look around."
"They were in the most beautiful fantastic land they had ever imagined. There were lots of little ponds-- and they were all different. Each pond had a little sign telling what it was for. Some were for drinking water, or for drinking rootbeer, or made of icecream to scoop out and eat. Some were for swimming and some were bubblebaths with water slides. And the trees and bushes and flowers were just as marvelous. They hung with food or toys or flowers."
"There was just one problem. There was no one else around to play with or even to talk to."
Then I told how all the inhabitants of the land were shy of strangers and had hidden and how the boys eventually found them and made friends and about all the adventures they had there--each boy having found a unicorn friend to ride and each unicorn was a different pastel color.
"One night on one of their adventures they found themselves in the center of a forest when they suddenly caught view of a fairy clearing. They hushed to a whisper, not wanting to be discovered or to disturb the fairy festivities. Their stillness paid off when they saw the king leprechaun who unbeknownst to them was their benefactor who had sent the tornado to bring them to the land at the end of the rainbow."
"When one of the unicorns snorted the leprechaun king looked in their direction and they found themselves looking eye to eye. The spell was broken and they must now ride the rainbow home. At dawn's first light they climbed into their swingset Eagle's Nest and faster than they could count to 25 they slid up and over the rainbow back into their own yard and the pot of gold followed them."
"They were glad to be home and when they told their mother of their adventures she suggested they use the gold to make a children's park modeled after the Rainbow-land so other children could take part in the wonder of it all."
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