I’m just finishing up with a three
year old client, after a rousing game of marble chute, and then a particularly funny book read by their
parent, as I align their small spine and tonify organs, applauding as great
masses of marbles fly about , and then laughing at the silly story their parent finishes as we end.
Leaving them to close up the waiting room so they can take their time, I step
outside my office and have the glorious surprise of Tessah (1) and her
Guardian, waiting for me under the eaves of the front walk as the rain splatters
into the garden.
Smiling, she is wiggly with delight
at appearing unexpectedly, and we all embrace hello, then decide a walk along
the rail trail over the Connecticut would be just the thing for a rainy day
like today.
In the car, she explains that today
at preschool was a special beginning-of-summer-and-insects fair, complete with
special projects. I had showed her a yellow spider I found in my bathroom this past week, who
had made a sac to live in. I had looked up ‘Yellow Sac Spider’, and discovered
that was her actual name, being a somewhat poisonous and problematic visitor
from Europe. We had admired her iridescent body and her finely spun sac, before
moving her carefully to the woods, and Tessah reported this and more at the
summer-insect celebration.
I have a fondness for insects and creatures,
so she often helps take photos and we sometimes sit and draw what we see after tromping
about the yard or woods, on visits, reminding each other of recalled details as
we pick up and put down crayons. She is fond of drawing very very large things,
so sometimes we use a roll of paper, in order to attain true proportion.
At times, when her Guardian comes to
pick her up, we have some many-legged creation that has unfurled the length of
the long galley kitchen floor, the German Shepherd pup restrained with great
complaint in the front hall, while we sing songs and she talks incessantly
about what part she is now working on and why its nails are like this or why it
has so many many pokey-out eyes, and that sort of important thing.
It is often imperative while drawing
together to burst into song, and the songs usually come bursting out of her, pertain to the creature or the Tessah we are drawing , what they did or saw or
ate. The other (me) then picks up the song when she is quiet for awhile, and carries it , til possibly the younger of us becomes bored NOT
being the one singing, and cuts in, ramping up the volume as
she takes hold of our song, and rambling off with it while I sit back in
amazement, trying hard not to smile as-if-she-is-so-cute, (which she HATES, and
notices very easily. So watch out. )
Today in the car she tells me she
gets to wear her special fuzzy pink sweater with the bug buttons , because,
wonder of all wonders, it is cool out today. She shows me her hair
clips restraining her irrepressibly curly brown hair, her stretchy bracelets adorning her small wrists, and her oh so
pink rubber boots specially designed for a splashy walk the likes of which we now go enjoy. With unrestrained gusto. Ending
up terribly wet, of course.
Later, back at her house, she stands
in the doorway of her bedroom waiting patiently for me, so we can climb upon into her tree house bed and
admire the long green papers hanging from the ceiling to simulate
a forest. We sit up there, cross legged, after our splashy stroll, while she
describes her friends, not liking boys, her best friend (a boy), what she
dreamed last night , and we imagine hearing sounds of all kinds of animals that
live in her forest, and maybe people who are from other lands who will become
her friends, which she will then be busy
drawing for days after.
I tell her stories of meeting her
when she was an infant, and the years since, all her perfect ages, as she grows so fast and furiously, wandering about the world so confident and loved and
Tessah-ish, unlike anyone else ever.
We end our visit sitting in their kitchen while she cuddles with her
Guardian, us swapping favorite Tessah stories and past adventures we all have
shared, while she basks and shines, then, predictably gets bored and itchy,
scrambling off to draw on the part of
her bedroom wall she gets to draw on, creating huge make believe animals. Later
she will get someone to write down the make believe names, listing them patiently, because she is four
and a HALF , after all, and despite all her remarkable abilities, still needs
some help with some things.
Her Guardian and I bask also,
recalling the unspeakable circumstances she was whisked away from soon after
birth, luckier than many, sadder than some, to be raised with such love and
stability and amazement of who this small person is.
And at times, I see the vestiges of
the wounds from long ago, the small separation from her self that still
lingers. But these things do happen in
our lives, do they not? And here she is, seeing, hearing, tasting, knowing her
true loveliness at each and every turn.
Hugging her busy, wiggly self goodbye,
I leave her to her creations as she describes to herself what each creature is
doing, making my way to my car and my home and my life, filled to the brim in
my heart.
(1) some facts changed
to retain privacy