Five.
In about three and a half months the Nootch will be five, (five!!!), and because I know I will not be able to deal with this momentous event as it happens and simultaneously compose my annual tribute (much less fully comprehend the import of this half decade milestone!), I will write my yearly birthday wish to the Nootch now, while she is still four though almost five, then post after the Big Day is a fact- a way of holding back time.
For a couple of weeks she and I have been reading Winnie-the-Pooh together on google hangout (which we call “skype”) a day here, a day there, chapter by chapter.
Okay, let’s revise. We’ve been reading a highly edited (by me) version of the original Winnie-the-Pooh in which I leave out a bunch of sentences here and there, sometimes whole paragraphs, so that the Nootch will not lose interest in a rather complicated narrative with all sorts of British-isms from way back that was written quite a while ago- almost a hundred years to be exact- for slightly older kids. She’s already told me in fact that the book is “complicated” though she seems proud of this passing observation, along with the very word itself, which she stresses and says slowly: com-pli-cated.
She knows the word “complicated?” How is this possible? When did she learn this? It’s much too complicated to fathom, this three thousand mile relationship that yields all kinds of complicated surprises!
The particular edition we are reading is based on the original black and white, with its few, small illustrations, though I chose the modernized, prettier “colorized” version; she calls these tiny pictures of Pooh and Piglet and Christopher Robin et al “pikcheeze” when she wants to actually see them as we read, because for a moment she has allowed herself the luxury of pretending she is only three, or maybe two, and therefore can say pikcheeze instead of pictures. Although the story is really quite grown up for a four year old, and the Nootch does try to rise to the occasion, every now and then she reverts to early toddlerdom and asks cutely if she can see the pikcheez. This request I am happy to fulfill by holding up the page we’re on to the miniscule camera lens clipped atop the desktop.
We usually do a chapter at a time, but I’ve told her that when her own mommy was little she, her mommy, often pleaded, and got, an additional chapter of Pooh at bedtime. So as not to be outdone, the Nootch in a slyly humorously manner asks if we too can do “one more chapter,” happy that she is getting away with something her mommy got away with when she too was in kiddie literary land. She wants to be as “mischievous” with Lynnie as was her mommy before her. Before we conclude our “skyping” on such chapter days, we always confirm exactly which number chapter we will be up to next time, and when we “meet” again she always remembers.
We usually read on a weekend, but apparently one morning as she got ready for pre-school she asked her mommy if she could “skype” with me right then and there, in that early a.m. What a crafty little reader! Oh, that we could. . . .
She drinks mint tea now too, from a mug.
She tells stories, lots of them, in great detail and there is drama.
She tells stories, lots of them, in great detail and there is drama.
While we’re reading, cavorting and singing songs to each other on screen (lately we’ve been tackling “Desperado,” Eagles version, which she’s quite taken to; she sent me a little video, via mommy, of her belting a heartfelt line from the tune, the one that goes Desperado, why don’t you let somebody love you. . . which she gets almost right with the words. With Gilly accompanying on the guitar and our pretending to screen hug, now and again she says that she wishes could really hug me.
Oh, me too, me too, me too, me too!
So by the time anyone reads this, she will be five and have even more stories to tell. If you’re reading this, it already has happened.
