Rainbow Time. A story by Charlotte.

Just can't get enough of these kitty ears!

The other night Philippe put Charlotte to sleep while I was out. I came home at 8:30 p.m. and we could still hear her whispering. She whispered until at least 9 p.m. When I went up to bed, I checked in to pull her covers up (she hates covers), and found that she had fallen asleep sitting up against her pillows, with her arms out to either side as if she were sort of flying.

Yesterday I asked her what she had been doing and why she hadn’t gone to sleep right away.

Here’s what she said, in her own words:

“It was rainbow time.”
“What’s rainbow time?”
“We, me and my friends [ed. note: “friends”= the menagerie of stuffed animals on her bed] fly up in the sky and get a rainbow and come back. I don’t fly, but they do. And I pretend my Bamma blanket [a blanket my mother knit for her] is a bag or my purse. The rainbow is in all wrapped up in another bag. I put it down when I sleep and then I put my arms out like this.”

“Last week,” she continued,” we were not really sleeping. We were not getting rainbows. We were getting hearts and putting them in a bag. And then we were at the movie theater*. When we’re at the movie theater we take the things out when we get there.”

I asked her what she did if only her friends fly into the sky. She responded, “I help them. I hold their hand and they fly like in I Can Fly. Piggie is so silly in I Can Fly, thinking he can fly….” She went off on a wild tangent here about this Mo Willems early reader book and I didn’t catch it all on paper.

As Charlotte told me this elaborate story, I wrote it down. Once she understood that I was writing it down, she embellished and embellished. The kid is a natural storyteller. I was riveted! Or, just maybe I was riveted because she’s mine. Who knows?


*Pronounced thee-ay-ter. I’m not sure where she gets that from, though Philippe says my mom. I know our friend Chuck pronounces it that way, but she hasn’t seen him in a long time.