File under 'F' for

Fuck if I know:

Buttercup wants to know the name of "the movie with the kids and the bad lady and the other bad lady and the kids?"

"Um, Narnia?" (Don't worry, my 3-year-old did not watch the film in its entirety. Stop threatening to call my social worker.)

"No. Not Narnia. It has the kids? And the lady? And the bad lady ... ... And there's a good lady?"

"Was it Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang?" She talked for a couple weeks about Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang after she watched it from the safe perch of her papa's lap. She wanted to know about that mean man and why the kids were trapped and why they didn't listen to their parents.

"No, not THAT. Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang has a bad man. I want the movie that has a bad lady."

"Where did you see it?"

"I sat in Papa's lap, but not Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. It was the twins' movie."

"Did you see it at Grandma D's?"

"Yes."

"Did it have kids dancing and singing?"

"Yes."

"And a bad lady who was silly? And did the little girl have red hair and a red dress and a big dog named Sandy?"

"Yes, yes, YES. I want that movie!"

Friends, my daughter wants "Annie."

Little, Orphan, Annie.

And she did not see it from the vantage point of her daddy's lap. Like the time she went (psst: not really) to the ballet with Abi, she made up that part - or confused her movie memories, or just wished she had been sitting in his lap. The next time she tells it, she may tell you she and Abi were both sitting in his lap as the three of them DANCED in the ballet.)

So now we have to have a talk about Annie.

Couldn't her cousins have a different favorite movie? Couldn't they have screened a nice Katharine Hepburn flick with their young cousin?

No. The boys love Annie. And now my daughter wants to watch Annie, too. Over the past couple days, she has brought it up once every few hours.

I ask her what she likes about the movie, thinking that the scenes of girls living communally in the orphanage may just remind her of something she can't quite put her finger on.

She says she likes the bad lady.

That makes sense too.

Yesterday, we celebrated our anniversary of becoming her parents. Two years.

Before bedtime, we all sat on her bed and looked through our photo albums from China and talked about what happened there.

She has seen these photos before many times. The albums are in our den at all times, so she can pick them up and look through them. But last night, when we got to the photos of her orphanage, she changed the subject, asking for orange juice.

The shots of us eating in a restaurant, though, she loved. She even leaned her forehead into the page at one point and said, "I want to go in there!"

Can you imagine? Can you imagine losing so much, and being so small with this big, hungry ball of loss inside you that you can't describe or understand?

If she needs to watch Annie, we'll watch it. And we're going to spend the day in the garden together.

That's all I know how to do.

Comments

[raehan]

Oh my god. This is gorgeous.

I need to thank Amy for sending me here.