Naughty bird

Something today reminded me of a little game I used to play with my children when I was a young mother and I just wanted to share it with you.

I’ve told a couple of stories about my life when our sons were young. The weirdest one has to be the Thomasina story. But today’s story isn’t anything like that. It was just fun.

As a young mother, I loved playing with my boys. I was warned by the elders in my life that childhood would be gone in the blink of an eye and just in case it was really true, I wanted to be prepared. So I used to do fun things with my children and I tried to be a good and loving mother. Like my mother was. One day I bought a couple of hand sock puppets, nothing very fancy; they were colorful and cute. One was a blue puppy and the other was a toucan.

I would pull the puppets over my hand and pretend that they could talk. I would ask questions, the puppets would respond and my sons were thrilled to see them talk. It was like magic! The puppy was good-natured and sweet. And the toucan on the other hand, well he was a bit of a trouble-maker. Three guesses as to which puppet my sons wanted to come out and play all the time.

Toucan creation by Linda Vanden-Martin (aka~perceptual enigma) on Flickr.

The toucan soon became the favorite and for a couple of years he had quite the adventures at our house. You see, he had formerly been a pirate’s bird but had escaped to the mainland, ending up in a zoo until he managed to fly through the cage all the way to Lancaster County and an Amish farm where he was promptly made into a sock.

Mommy’s crazy. Yes, I know.

The toucan liked driving the car, too. He often came with us when we went on our errands. “Make tutu drive, mommy!” they would both squeal. And so, with no other cars on the country roads we travelled, tutu would take the gear shift of the little Volvo 240D, shift into 4th gear and drive from side to side a bit.

Immediately, I would exclaim things like, “Tutu! You bad bird! Get back into 3rd gear and start acting right!” And tutu would stop but not after my boys had giggle fits about the whole thing.

The bird used to make faces behind my back and sass me, but he always apologized saying that he picked up the bad habits from his pirating days.

The boys were mesmerized.

I remember one day in particular, a day when I was uncharacteristically down-in-the-dumps and my youngest son came and said to me, “Let’s play tutu, mommy”. I told him that tutu had gone out of town for a few days, and then I quietly hid the little puppet in a really good spot. I hid him because they would find him like they always did and they would beg me to play tutu and gosh darn, I just didn’t feel like being a funny little former-pirate-sock-bird that day . . .

I looked for that bird high and low after that. I spent hours searching. And I never found him again. It makes me sad to think of it even today. I think that I put him in a big toy box that was destined for a friend who had younger children than mine. I had collected some baby toys and set them aside for her. And I think that tutu ended up in her home although she says she never saw him.

Anyway, just a memory. Everyone got over it and the blue puppy was still around but he was always second-best anyway.

And so ends my trip down memory lane.

Love,

PS ~ Healing well! Thanks for the kind thoughts. It’s always something with me.