Perception is reality

This afternoon we were out on a walk and Phoebe wanted to see a police car. 

Now, I have some serious skills as a mother. I can kiss boo-boos better. I can sing away nightmares. I can tape ripped pieces of paper. However...

Not once have I been able to conjure something out of midair. I've been working on it since Rachel could talk and started requesting to see donkey carts while we were taxiing about Cairo. Unfortunately for her, I couldn't make donkey carts appear whenever she wanted to see one. 

Despite the intervening years of parenting...I still just...kind of am not very good at conjuring things...so Phoebe was rather disappointed.

"Is that a police car?"

"No. That's just a black car."

"Is that a police car?"

"No. That's a white truck." 

"Is that a police car?"

"Again...no...that's just a red car."

"Well, I want to see a police car! Can you find me an...oooooh!"

Just then a car with a Dominoes pizza delivery sign on top drove by.

"Now there's a police car!" she said, happily. "See how it has the red and blue lights on top?"

"Well," I said. "That was actually a pizza delivery car..."

"I knew we would see a police car today!"

I decided to just let her have that one. 

Dominoes delivery...police car. What's the difference?

*****

In other news, Phoebe remains terrified of drain monsters...or gutter monsters or sewer monsters or even pipe monsters. They go by many names. This linguistic relativity is representative of the how consuming  these monsters are in Phoebe's thoughts (maybe...perhaps read that last part with a hint of sarcasm). As Kimmerer noted about serviceberries, "the more names [something] has, the greater its cultural importance" (p. 3 of The Serviceberry). 

She came into our room the other night, wanting to claim the safest sleeping spot in the whole house: the middle of mom and dad's bed, tucked in between her parents.

When I got up in the morning I careful slid out of Phoebe's gasp and tried to sneak out of my room. To my surprise, the door was locked!

Not only had she come to sleep between us so the gutter monsters couldn't get her...she had locked the bedroom door behind her when she came in (so the gutter monsters couldn't come in, she explained to me when I asked her about it). I'm amazed at how real she seems to think these creatures are when...she is the one who created the mythology.