Evening activities

You may recall that a few days before Thanksgiving I explained to Rachel  that "the Funny Man," a street performer who entertained passersby at the Hawthorne Bridge onramp, had died. Today, on the way in to school, she reminded me that she had wanted to add something to the makeshift memorial at his former spot. I said, "Do you want to do that tonight, after school?" and she said she did, so we spent the rest of the drive planning what she wanted to do.

So when I came to pick her up tonight, I brought with me a yellow balloon Rachel had in her closet and some markers. She very carefully wrote her name, and (with my help) a heart next to it, on the balloon. On the other side she drew (again with help, but not too much) a picture of a princess wearing a purple crown. Then we drove down and parked near the bridge entrance and walked up to the memorial.

As I tied the balloon onto a music stand, Rachel looked over the other items people had left. I explained that sometimes when people die who meant a lot to people, they leave things to show how much they miss him, and then I asked if she wanted to say anything to the Funny Man as if he were there.

"Bye, Funny Man! I love you and I'll miss you!" Then, "Was that good, Daddy?"

Perfect, sweetheart.

Then we walked back to the car. It was chilly and windy, and I'd complained a bit about the cold on the way up. Rachel took my left hand and held it in her two mittened hands, and asked "Does that help, Daddy?"

"It sure does, sweetie. Whenever I'm with you, you make me warm inside my heart."

"But that doesn't help, Daddy, because you're warm in your heart but the rest of your body is cold."

"Well, sweetie, the warm goes out from my heart and all through my body."

Then we drove to Powell's for a bit of book-reading, and on the way she said "It's too bad the Funny Man died, because he would have made an awesome clown." Then we had another in our continuing series of discussions about which kids at school bite other kids.

At Powell's we sat down to read some Pinkalicious books (see previous post if you're not up on the Pinkalicious oeuvre), and a little girl came over to watch. I invited her to join us (she turned out to be a 6-year-old named Bella), and she took Rachel in hand to look for more books. Then, after we started, another little girl came over and we invited her to sit down with us. Her name was Evva (spelling approximate), she was 7, and she and her family were visiting from Boulder because they were on a book tour with her father, who was reading from his book that night (right next to the kids' area, in fact). So I had an audience of 3 girls, which I have to say was pretty cool. Also cool was the way Bella and Evva accepted Rachel as a peer, even though she's only 4. And no one got bit, which to my mind is always key.