Storytellers

Every night when I put my girls to bed, each one gets 10 minutes of uninterrupted, sister-free cuddle time with me to do with as they please. My 8-year-old likes to spend her 10 minutes telling me about her day as she sketches her endless fashion lines. At 8 years old she has more fashion sense and style than I ever will. I've made peace with that. And I'm ridiculously impressed with her skills. She can craft an entire seasonal wardrobe in about ten minutes, from clothes to shoes to accessories. I have no idea where this innate sense of style comes from, but I'm glad one of us has it.

My 6-year-old, insatiable reader that she is, wants a story during cuddle time every night. She's read every book in the house a dozen times, so she wants something original. My task is to tell her a new story every night, developed on the spot, to fit within the 10-minute time-frame. I can get behind that. This child was made for me. I mean, of course she was...I made her. But you know what I mean. The 8-year-old is my physical mini-me. We have the same face. But my 6-year-old is my secret mini-me. She's me on the inside. Only better.

I come into her room at night and find her flipping through books, scouring the wall-stickers decorating her room, the toys strewn about the floor. She quickly picks a few objects/characters, say: this sticker of an apple, this lion puppet, and this Rapunzel book. She steers me onto her bed, climbs in next to me, hugs her pillow, and says: "Okay. Go!"

And in ten minutes I weave a quick tale about a very hungry lion who wants the last apple from the top of a tall tree, and how Rapunzel shows up in the nick of time, using her long hair to hoist herself up and fetch the apple, saving the starving lion and making a lifelong friend. The end. And then I get graded. My little listener will tap her rosebud lips, look up at the ceiling with her big blue eyes. "Good, but I think it needs a better ending. With a witch." So I tack on a new twist that just when the lion and Rapunzel thought they were home free an evil witch appears to tell them it's her apple tree and she will now be keeping them prisoner for stealing her apple. On the way deeper and deeper into the dungeon, which is full of magical creatures the witch has trapped over the years, Rapunzel uses her hair to tie up the witch. The lion frees the unicorn, pegasus, leprechaun, mermaid, and fairy that have been held prisoner. Together they lock the witch in her own jail. When they flee the witch's haunted house, on their way through the barren orchards, the apple trees bloom and fill with apples. Magic returns to the land, and the lion will never be hungry again.

"Better," my critic tells me. When I get a really good one she'll launch across the bed and hug me. "Best story ever!" she'll yell in my ear. Those are the best cuddle times.

I've been through the wringer of grad school writing workshops, so I have a thick skin. I've been an editor for 17 years. I am not thrown by criticism. And yet pleasing this little girl with my tales matters in a way that nothing else has. I spend all day writing, either on the page or making endless notes in my mind for the next time I'm in front of my computer. I eat, drink, sleep, breathe writing. But none of that has prepared me for the joy I feel at making up a story a day, every day, for my little girl. It's good exercise for my writer-mind, to have to come up with a beginning, middle, and end without any prep time. It's great to get instant feedback in that unfiltered ego-free way that only children have. I love to watch her expression as I make it up, to see which parts get her more interested and which ones get less of a reaction, so I can steer it in the direction that makes her light up the most. But best of all, it's great to see that she gets it: what I love about words and characters and settings and plot twists and humor and dialogue. It's great that she understands inherently about story arc the same way her sister gets clothes-as-art.

I'm also pretty proud of her editing and critique skills. I can tell you from years of experience that she knows what she's talking about. When she gets a little older, ready for more grown-up themes, I have no doubt that she'll be my best beta-reader. In the mean time, if any of you ever need a good, honest critique of a children's story, I've got your girl. She's the little blue-eyed pixie, hugging a pillow and waiting for me to come up with an adventure involving a potato, a dragon, and Snow White.

Aloha

We're back in Hawaii: me, my girls, and my sister-in-law Jessica for a week in one of my favorite places in the world. I've got sun and the sound of ocean waves, myna birds and palm trees, mongooses (the girls prefer "mongeese"), plumeria trees, fresh-cut pineapple and papaya, a fridge full of Pog, and a much-needed week with no plans whatsoever. No school lunches to prep, no gymnastics to rush off to, no homework to check, no dog to clean up after, and no nagging household chores to do.

The girls, still on California time, have been the first up each day. They wake Jessica and me up with music blaring from their iPod, the little thumps of dancing legs just outside our bedroom door, their high girlish voices singing along to Adele.

We sip Kona coffee on the lanai and wait for the day to start. The first few days we were up before sunrise, but today the sun beat us. We've visited a variety of beaches, had pool time each day, have watched a hula show, gone to the beautiful and calming Place of Refuge, and done some shopping. The days have a timeless feel and pass both quickly and slowly. Yesterday we decided to spend an hour at the beach. With twenty minutes left we took to the waves. The girls bodysurfed while the grown-ups scanned the horizon for the last of the migrating humpback whales, the mamas with their new calves. When we checked the time three hours had passed.

String bean, out of the water since last summer, has gotten reacquainted with her swimming skills. She's built like a swimmer, long and lean with a wide wingspan, and she can cover the length of the pool in a single breath. At seven years old, she's probably a better swimmer than I'll ever be. Peanut, five now and determined to do everything her own way, huffs along in her spastic doggie paddle style, still stubbornly refusing to try any real strokes. Luckily we have water wings, so she can alternate between floating along and thrashing around and I know she'll stay safely afloat. The girls exhaust themselves with jumping waves, making sandcastles, running free in their hot pink flip flops, swimming in the pool for hours, and each night as I cuddle with them for our daily list of three good things, they've fallen asleep on me before finishing.

Jessica has been an enormous help on this trip. After a year of single-motherhood I'd forgotten what it's like to have an extra set of hands for dinner prep, kid-bathing, dishes, laundry, general clean-up, and driving around. I was prepared for a kid-centered vacation, but I've gotten more relaxing in than expected thanks to Jessica's presence. We're a lot alike, quiet readers who prefer the sound of the ocean to the bustle of a crowed street, drama-free types who like to get the work out of the way so we can sit and chat and relax. The girls adore their aunt, and I'm enjoying watching them vie for her attention, off the hook for many mommy duties that they'd rather have her do. It's also been a great week to keep our friendship going, which has always been a separate thing from my marriage to her brother. The separation from my husband has done nothing to diminish my bond with Jessica, and this week has been a great reminder of that.

Whenever we come here, I remind the girls that they have Hawaiian blood, are tied to these islands beyond loving vacations here. The concept of ancestors seems hard for them to grasp, but they like to hear the stories, of their Chinese great-great-great grandfather Chun Afong marrying a Hawaiian Chief's granddaughter. They never met their Hawaiian-born grandmother, and while String Bean has my same almond-shaped eyes and olive-toned skin, fair-skinned and blue-eyed Peanut doesn't look like she could possibly have Hawaiian blood in her anywhere. But from the stories they have decided that they are Hawaiian princesses, and this fills them with a ridiculous amount of joy. Almost as much joy as I get out of being here with them.

A Princess Doesn’t Wear Socks

It’s hard to reason with Disney-brainwashed little girls. Everything must sparkle, be silky, or otherwise befit Belle, Cinderella, or Ariel. When String Bean wanted to play outside on a 45-degree afternoon, I told her she needed to change out of her Sleeping Beauty dress and into warm clothes. She consented to pants, a pink fleece shirt with crown imprints all over it, and a gold tiara. She drew the line at socks. I told her she’d be too cold outside in her little pink flats, but that I’d let it slide if she put on warm socks under them. She looked at me like I was telling her to play in traffic and said, “A princess doesn’t wear socks.” So there you have it. They also, in case you were wondering, don’t wear jackets, mittens, scarves, or hats. She says they don’t need to, as their long flowing hair keeps their head warm. Also, it’s hard to wear a tiara with a hat on.

Cinderella

Halloween came early to our house this year, primarily because String Bean wants to be Cinderella this year, and when I happened across a not-terribly overpriced Cinderella costume in her size, that showed none of the wear and tear of costumes on racks later in the season, she was with me. I tried to figure out how to buy it without her seeing, so I could hide it away upstairs (with Peanut’s Snow White costume), but it didn’t work out. The downside is that she always wants to wear the costume now, and I’m worried it’ll get wrecked before Halloween. The upside is that when wearing the costume, she adopts the mannerisms of a princess. She walks on her tiptoes in a sweeping, ballet-like fashion, moving slowly so as to avoid wrinkling the dress, she keeps her hands at her sides, gently resting them on the puffy skirt of her gown, she even holds her mouth in a princess-like half-smile the entire time. The overall effect is that when wearing the dress, she isn’t running, jumping, screaming, tackling or playing tug-of-war with her sister, or rolling around on the floor underfoot. In fact, she pretty much stands before the mirror, just twirling in slow motion or waving to her imaginary minions. Hopefully the dress survives intact until Halloween. But even if it doesn’t, I’m getting my money’s worth out of it in good behavior.

The Airport

We have a local airport here in town, where small planes and helicopters take off and land all day, right next to a nice little enclosed viewing area where the girls love to run and watch take-offs and landings. We took the girls over there this weekend, to watch them race around the fenced off area with their arms spread wide, mimicking the revving of an airplane’s engine just before takeoff, soaring around the viewing area for a few laps, before coming in for their own mock landing.

It was hot, and there is no shade there, so after about forty minutes of this the grown ups were ready to go, but the girls, red-cheeked and damp with sweat, had no interest in leaving. We had the place to ourselves, which isn’t unusual for noon on a hot, sunny summer day, but even when there are others there, far too often our kids are the only girls at the viewing area. Hubby and I both feel strongly about exposing the girls to male-dominated fields, reminding them repeatedly that they can be anything they want when they grow up. They’ll have enough people trying to limit them as they grow, we figure it’s our jobs to introduce them to as many possibilities as we can, encouraging them to seriously consider all of them, regardless of whether it’s mostly men or women who work in that field. The fact that String Bean’s life goal right now is to become a princess when she grows up notwithstanding. Surely she could be both a princess and a pilot.

Princesses

One thing that has surprised me about having two daughters is that they are such girls: prone to bouts of giggling, obsessed with fairies, insistent about wearing dresses whenever possible, fond of role-playing where one gets to be the princess and the other is prince charming. I wouldn't call myself a particularly girly girl. I don't wear make-up, the most I do to style my hair is use conditioner and a comb. I've had two manicures in my life, and no pedicures. I'm a jeans and t-shirt mom, unless it's summer, when I'm a shorts and t-shirt type.

Last summer, inspired by all of that sparkling purple and pink energy in my house, I broke down and bought a few skirts. The girls loved it, seeing my feminine side. "You look like a princess!" they announced whenever I threw on one of the skirts. And I liked them, too. They were good for the hot weather. If only the shoes that went with them were more comfortable, or the practical shoes I prefer went with skirts. Plantar fasciitis cares nothing about fashion.

For Easter I got the girls headbands with felt flower petals all around. They're adorable in them, these little flower girls, and have been wearing them since Easter. But I failed to notice that the petals were covered in glitter. So now the little princesses leave a trail of sparkles everywhere they go, and I've spent so much time wiping glitter off their faces, afraid it'll get into their eyes, that I'm wondering what the statute of limitations is on a new gift before it can "disappear" into the box of annoying toys I keep hidden in the closet.

A while back I looked at my husband across the dinner table, dutifully wearing the sparkly headband the girls had offered him (matching the ones they wore), and said, "I'm sorry you'll never have a son." After all, we've both agreed that two kids is our limit (we don't want to be outnumbered). He laughed and said it was fine. "Yeah, but you must get a little tired of showing up at work every day covered in glitter," I said. He looked down at his shirt, brushed off the sparkly dust that had fallen from the headband, and shrugged. "Not really." I guess we've both learned to embrace the princess influence.