Tonight we slept like angels did.
Tonight I claimed indulgence from my little girl as I played Eeyore, the unforgettably (highly suspect ?!) "unmemorable" stuffed toy donkey character from the widely known Winnie the Pooh adventure stories . It all began with me trying to jog her memory of him ( I don't know why we got there) and it did come to her eventually but only to sufficiently end in magic realism diffused from within her.
Some of the things that kids say and imagine, seem to sink its hooks right into our very hearts. We wouldn't have had this enchanting conversation if I were to remain the "Amma me" busying us to be tucked in bed.
She sought the conduit of the "Eeyore me".
It was bedtime so I feigned exhaustion and sleepiness. I switched the lights off, the door wide open to the hallway- the room gently aglow from its light; the rays of which found its slant landings on one of her drawings tacked dutifully on the wall of this room; many moons ago. It was a drawing made out of her glitter pens, done with all the "loverliness" afloat in her heart while I'd been away from her for a few days . When I'd gotten back she presented me with that sublime sparkly piece of art.
A drawing of me and her.
She was recounting to the "Eeyore me" what the "Amma me" thought of her work.
"Do you know what she felt? She loved it so much she wanted to stay there!"
"Stay where?", I checked while not betraying my Eeyore inflection.
"In my picture. In glitter land." She sounded incredulous yet persisted on.
"You know what my mother says? That we have a third eye in our hearts and that helps us see the wings we have. It is using our imagination. That is why we're angels. My mother and I are angels."
There goes the meaning of her life in a single breath. Quite a metaphysical thought for a 6 year old to be tossing at a bedtime conversation. And no, she did not get "the third eye in our hearts" concept from me. It's all a result of the churnings of her mind. Heart? Brain?
I resumed my curiousity.
"So do only children have the third eye in their hearts?"
"Well, not all. It's like Shiva. His left eye is the Sun, right eye the Moon and the third eye the fire."
She ends "fire" with a slip of a revelation to be kept just between the two of us. That was to remain our secret knowledge. (Not quite so now, is it?!)
She goes on, "So only those who believe in the third eye will see glitterland. And so we're angels.
Do you believe in the third eye, Eeyore?"
"I'm beginning to believe in it now." I said, swearing inside my head that I'd felt my heart grow luminous in a smile.
"Then you will be a donkey angel with a pink bow!"
I cracked up at that declaration. My once blazing heart spilled all over our space. She felt sublimed immediately- mighty pleased to have found a gloom dripping Eeyore guffawing in her face.
" I don't usually live here. Can you see that greyish brown part in the sky?", she asked while pointing at the window. It was dark, overcast with looming rain clouds made aware of its presence by the city lights.
"I live there. I have a castle. You can't see it from here."
This, she confides in me with all her breath put in this belief.
I add on, "It's like those Japanese movies with castles in the sky."
"No. My castle doesn't stay there. It has wings. Large wings. And I sit on them. It floats!" Animation oozed from within her eyes and voice like satin.
"There are swans too. And the huge castle is in the middle of it. It's got a ceiling as high as space!"
"Ah!"
She went on about it through the night, in great length like an artist performing a soliloquy; so intoxicated in the narration of her imaginings that I had to snap the both of us out this other worldly revel.
It was a school night, after all!
All we can do sometimes is shrug at the choice we've decided to take.
Today, she took her break from school and forged her solidarity with the whole "school going business" in the night by conferring with the ghosts of her imagination - which included me, the donkey angel with the pink bow. We were both replenished in a strange way. Almost transcendently.
Tonight we slept like angels did.
