Dear Reese,
I lie down on my back on the floor next to your crib. My hand reaches between the bars so you can curl your fist around one of my fingers. The ceiling is covered in the constellations Cappi painted; an echo of my own childhood bedroom. I have one headphone in my ear — I was listening to my podcast while preparing your bottles for tomorrow when you woke up crying, only thirty minutes after I put you to bed.
Soon your hand relaxes and I sneak out. Teething is brutal, but I could have slept there with your hand holding mine.
Love,
Mama
P.S. The Castle in the Pond, Part 12
You’ve freed yourself and The Great Bullfrog from your prison with your magical trowel but in doing so disrupted the magic of the dam and it’s collapsing on top of you!
You run — over logs and branches, through mud and packed plants falling over your face. The Great Bullfrog is ahead of, behind you, beside you as you scramble together for safety. You ask, in desperation, if her magic can do something.
“Croak! I told you, my magic is gone!”
So you keep running, half swimming, as water rushes through the once water-tight cracks.
[Here we flip a bath toy as a game of chance — if the turtle lands up, you make it out safely; if the turtle lands upside down, you don’t. One, two, three, the turtle splashes into the tub upside down.]
It’s too late. You are swept up in the rush of water, battered by wood and debris. You lose sight of The Great Bullfrog as you’re pulled down and under the surface of the bond carried by the current.
[We flip our turtle toy one more time to see where you’re carried. Once again, the toy lands upside down. Before this game of chance, we tested the toy to ensure it was balanced so it could land both ways in the tub . . .]
When you start to get your bearing your heart skips a beat. Right above you are the shapes of webbed feet and the outline of enormous wings. You’ve been carried right below the black swan!
[Here, I ask you to make a choice. I put two figures on the tub rim — the Green Goblin and Miles Morales’s Spider-Man. Both finger puppet toys you love. I tell you that the Green Goblin means you’ll stealth to safety and Spider-Man means you’ll take your chances and fight. You grab Spider-Man.]
In a reckless rage for all the black swan has taken away so quickly, you swim up and bite its foot. Your teeth served you well against The Fierce Croc but as soon as you bite you feel your powerlessness. The foot kicks back at you, slamming against your head and you begin to spin in the water as you see the black swan move above you. But before you lose consciousness you see another form, much smaller coming towards you. Your friendly duck is here!
To be continued . . .