Making Sense of Holidays

I don't know if it had something to do with all the extra time for quality conversation that Django & I had over Spring Break, but I noticed a new twist to our communications. It isn't just me who guides the subject matter anymore. He's now got his own things to say about his day. And I don't mean just his own things to say about what happens in the present or what he wants to happen next. He's been narrating that way for a while.

The big difference is that now he talks about what happened in the past. Like the other night, when I was telling Elmo all about our whirlwind weekend as we lay in the dark headed for sleep, Django reminded me of two things I completely forgot to mention -- "goat brush" and "rabbit rattle rabbit truck rabbit ball" -- both of which I thought I'd better document with photographs in the last post since they seemed so important to him.

As it happened, the significance of him chiming in on my weekend report didn't register right away. Yeah, you're right, you did brush a goat at a zoo, was what I said aloud. And, uh-huh, that's true, you did play with a rabbit's rattle, truck and ball when we were volunteering and visiting Save-A-Bunny. In fact, it probably wasn't until a few nights later when -- in similar circumstances, reviewing the events of the day -- he told me "telephone Tedra" that I started to believe he might really be participating in my reflection. I thought he might have been telling me he heard Tedra talking on the phone, but when I asked her about it the next morning she said Django had been playing with her phone a lot the day before.

I was incredulous, then proud, and shortly thereafter...terrified.

This is a whole new game. He not only understands what I say, he can correct me on my content. I'm sure questions are right around the corner. And what on earth is he going to end up asking me about things like Easter? How am I going to make sense for him out of hunting for colored eggs in the grass, people dressed as rabbits, baskets of candy, a mythical resurrection and roast lamb for dinner? It can't even make sense of all that for me.