Frances Friday: Mopey Edition

Frances has, somehow, effortlessly mastered social graces that I still have yet to grasp at nearly-33. It's no wonder she has as many friends as she does, when she tosses out compliments like candy at a scramble. "Oh M, that's such a pretty bag!" she says to one daycare friend on our way out the door. "I like your shirt, Mummy. It's pretty," she says one day when we are getting dressed. Or "That is a nice necklace, Mummy," when I put my pentacle on.

And how she loves to get herself all dolled up too, how she stands there in her red christmas dress and ladybug necklace, wearing white tights and her black party shoes, utterly conscious of her own adorableness, waiting for the compliments. Hands behind her back, twirling slightly, huge grin. "I look great! Someone say so!" Someone invariably does. Usually many someones.

~~~~~

Frances was so excited last week by her birthday party she did not want to go to sleep. I let her stay up late as it was (so she could play with all of her new toys), but still, when I told her it was time for sleep, she broke into sobs. "It's Not Fair!" she wailed. "I haven't had a ch-ch-chance to p-p-play with my bus y-yet!"

"Well, it is fair," I said. "But it's not going anywhere. You can play with it tomorrow."

Advice she took to heart, Dear Readers. Every morning this week she crept into my room between 6 and 6:30, determined to squeeze every ounce of playtime out of her morning routine that she could. She voluntarily went without any television so she could have more time with her toys. Every evening the same--don't bother with dinner, Mummy, and I don't want to watch Horton; just let me at my calico critters, we have serious playing to do.

~~~~~

Last night I sat for a while in the glider chair in Frances's empty bedroom. Her many sleep-time friends were piled higgledy-piggledy on her headboard; her fairy play set was still out from C's visit last weekend; the top of her dresser is covered with take-homes from school and clothes that need mending. There are grapes on her bookcase that need throwing out and her sheets need washing this weekend.

I suppose I don't need to tell you what I was feeling.

But that wasn't all.

I remembered the late nights priming and painting her room light pink, the colour she picked all by herself. I remember assembling the furniture, shopping with her for the new cover for her bed and the curtains with the bright red flowers and the bees. I remember finding the flower stencils and painting coat after coat so that they would be the exact right shade of red. I remember peeling decades of coats of various beige paints off of the closet door, needing to chisel it open because they'd painted it shut.

I remembered further back, too. Sewing the big bear floor pillow out of dark brown and beige fleece, when I was pregnant, cross-stitching the Peter Rabbit pictures on the wall. I remembered working on them after the first of the prenatal misdiagnoses, in the waiting room, wondering what news I would get that day, but believing that I was still going to get my happy ending. It wasn't the happy ending I envisioned way back then, when the only ending I believed could be happy was a normal pregnancy and a normal child. But I was right. I did get my happy ending.

I paid for it, but I got it.

There is a lot of love packed into that little bedroom.

Maybe this will be the same. Another happy-ending in disguise.

Posted by Andrea at January 18, 2008 10:12 AM under Frances Friday

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