MAKING DO

We’re missing our Friday Library Visit today, because Ganner’s over toward school, and is picking up Sweetpea.   They go to hardware stores and Sam’s and stuff, and that’s sorta a fair division of labor AND company, all around.

We’ve been going together to our dear Library, she and I, since she was in one of those little seats you snap in and out of the car to carry, and we’ve made our way through a great number of the books, from the little cloth numbers loved and squeezed, through the thick-paged small ones with a tiny story told in tiny words, (WHERE'S the BEE?   There he is!), on to read-mes that carry on WAY into time for bedtime prayers.

She explores the tree-house, the little phone booth where you can sit and have a story read over the phone, the bins of puppets and games and puzzles in their sturdy numbered bags.   And she still loves the “little” stuff---a sweet mama-llama puppet with a tee-ninecy baby stitched to her side, and the little-fingers puzzles with big bright-coloured wooden pieces.

Last time, she spent a lot of time at the colouring table, making percentages of pies and kites and arches.   Then then, in a nod to times gone by, she came over with a thick round plate pie-wedged and shaded, with small divots lined in dingy Velcro. 

“What would you like on your PIZZA?” she asked.   I consulted the puzzle-pieces for the menu.

“Vegetables,” I said, as she began to apply peppers and mushrooms.  Then, knowing Ganner’s propensity for meat on his pizza, she rounded up all the pepperoni and started to stick them on like map-pins.

She thought for a moment, then went back to the puzzle-bin.   In a bit she came back with a little blue whale, perhaps from some sea-faring scene.

“He likes anchovies, but they don’t have any,” she said.   “Will this do, you think?”

Indeed I did.