Gleek’s Horses

Putting Gleek to bed is never simple. She is usually quite happy to put pajamas on, have a snack, climb into bed, say prayers, and listen to stories, all of these things get her more attention than usual, but when it comes time for me to leave the room she begins all the stalling tactics she can think of. Her water bottle needs filled. She’s still hungry. She needs all three blankets. She needs to tell me something. This last is the most common tactic. I’ll ask her what she needs to tell me and she’ll “um” and “hmm” for a full minute before she can think of what she desperately needed to tell me. Eventually I just have theget mean and tell her to save all her important information for the morning, because I’d stand in her doorway for hours trying to listen to all of her “one more things.”

Sometimes though I have a little more time/energy to listen and I get delightful looks into the mind of this sprite that I call my daughter. Just the other night I was tucking her under her covers and she was lamenting again that she hadn’t gotten a chance to ride the white pony named Ghost when we went to a local farm last summer. Everyone else got a turn on Ghost and she didn’t and it wasn’t fair. She was ready to burst into tears over this tragedy when with one of the lightning switches of thought that Gleek so often makes, she decided that when she gets her horse she will call it Ghost. No, she will call it Ghost Sky! No, she will call it White Sky and it will be a white horse. Or maybe it would be a tan horse because that is her favorite color. And when she has her horse she will also have one of those things you fasten horses to that go around. Only it will go fast so that the horses can run instead of walk. And she will get lots of horses to put on it. And they will all run. They will be all colors. No they will be all white! All white horses! And she will name one Bretta and one Ghost sky and one Song. No, they will ALL be named Bretta! and when her friend comes over they will ride horses and the horses will go super fast! And they will hold on tight so that they don’t fall off. Won’t that be fun Mom?

I agreed that yes it would be fun and carefully tried to extricate myself from the room without disturbing her happy thoughts of the horses she dreams of having. We have no space in our yard to house even one horse, but I’m not going to rule out the possiblity that she will be determined enough to figure out how to own a horse someday. For now she can dream of a dozen white horses named Bretta that she and her friends will ride. Fast.