A five-year-old asked for help getting ready for bed. She was small, her sharp features vaguely reminiscent of a rodent. I’d been listening to her boss other kids around all afternoon. And watching them obey.
I suggested some cozy clothes. It had been a long day and something warm would be nice.
Mousie turned and started trudging up the stairs with me a few steps behind. Over her shoulder she informed me that she wanted a dress. I mumbled agreement, thinking she meant a princess dress – like the one she’d put over her clothes earlier that day.
I was wrong.
By the time I turned the corner into her bedroom, Mousie was rifling through a drawer in her IKEA dresser. She glanced at me over her shoulder, and immediately launched into how she didn’t have anything to wear. Picking up sherbet-colored fabric bits one by one, she explained why each wouldn’t work. Too small…too scratchy…too uncomfortable…too ugly…didn’t match…only for school… The list went on and on, Mousie’s voice raising closer to a shriek with every discarded article.
I watched her and thought about how many shirts I could fit into my dresser if only I were smaller. Said that maybe she should try pajamas.
Mousie threw her shirts down in disgust, slammed the drawer shut, and glared up at me.
Clearly – I was wrong again.
“But I don’t WANT pajamas!! I WANT a dress! You SAID I could wear a dress!” she had reached full-on fishwife, albeit in miniature, by now.
I asked her to show me what dress she meant. Still hoped it was the purple princess costume.
But no. Instead of purple, she reached up on her tiptoes and grabbed the hem of a white, flouncy, yellow-flowered confection. “THIS DRESS!! You said I could wear THIS dress!” she yelled.
“Oooohhhh. Oh no…you can’t wear that to bed,” I kept my voice low and monotone. Soothing, even.
“But you SAID I could!!!!” Mousie was determined to make up for my monotone with her screeching.
“How bout this nightgown instead? It looks like a dress,” I suggested hopefully, holding up a pink and red something or other.
Her look was pure venom and immediately followed by a wailing monologue. One about how her dad NEVER lets her wear dresses and how he ALWAYS makes her wear pants and how she asks and she asks and she asks and she can NEVER wear dresses and how this ONE time she thought MAYBE she’d finally be able to wear something that made her feel PRETTY…
She paused for a breath.
I’d sat on the bed to watch, mesmerized. She checked to make sure I was paying attention. Then she continued on about how her life was coming to an end because she wasn’t allowed to wear any (one of the twenty) dresses hanging in her closet.
She punctuated her sentences with arm flails and pouts and puppy dog eyes and more than one very calculated hair fluff.
She was the spitting image of her mother.
And I was still wrong.
Mousie was 1/6 my age and 1/8 my weight, and I was 0-3 in my attempts to persuade her into pajamas. I consciously smoothed the look of shock – and very likely more than a little awe – off my face.
Her tirade wound down. We stared at each other.
I shrugged. Lowered my eyebrows and folded my hands. Looked at the dress, clearly out of her reach. Moved my gaze to the nightgown, carelessly crumpled at her feet.
“Ok, then. Wear what you want. I’m headed down to watch a movie.” I casually shrugged again and meandered out of the room.
Mousie stayed sitting under the dress of her dreams, knees up and head down. I left the room.
Nine stairs and four steps later, I put a DVD into the player.
When I turned around, Mousie was there. In pink and red. Crawling up on the couch and making room for me to sit next to her under the blanked.
I pressed play. Monsters, Inc. appeared. Mousie snuggled under my shoulder.
Every day another story -
Sofie
