h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My daughter and I visit our friends at their house on Sunday afternoon. I am welcome there, even in my sweaty clothes after rehearsal. The four of us sit on the sheet spread in the backyard, tempera paints in little pots, a myriad of brushes, and lots of brown cardboard squares piled up. This is how we get re-acquainted after time apart. We sit, chat, and paint. This is a language we all are comfortable with.

The girls are bold and make wonderful swirls of colors running altogether before they leap up and disappear inside. Trisha and I stay outside and paint, talking the way women do when they are alone and not self-conscious.

The girls reappear.. these miraculous blonde offspring from two dark-haired mothers, down the porch steps they fly, each sporting layers of shimmering cloth and brightly colored feathers like two exotic birds suddenly released from captivity.

They announce that they are Wild Fairy Princesses and flit around us in brilliant flashes of light and color. We are the calm at the center, the point they orbit around in all their frenetic glory. I am sure my heart will burst from the sheer beauty of them. I love their wildness, the fierce determination of their imaginations as they create a world together in that backyard and grant these two mothers the honor of brief passports to that wondrous place of being five years old, when the world was full of possibilities and could be made into exactly what you wanted by uttering the magical words:

"Mommy! Pretend that .....!"