Apr 17, 2020
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Pinned to Dodd House: Some smart ideas for small spaces here. https://ift.tt/2NfKs98
señor bubalo and the little girl of dodd house, part ii (283/365)
... At first Erin found the whole thing delightful. Cindy had never had an imaginary friend, and Erin had always wondered if this lack was a deficiency in Cindy’s development. She listened, asked playful questions and laughed at all the right places until Cindy started asking Erin about Kathy’s parents.
“Do you know what happened to Kathy’s Mommy and Daddy, Mommy?”
“No, Cece, what happened to her Mommy and Daddy?”
“They died here.”
Coffee mug in hand, Erin paused half way to her mouth. This wasn’t the sort of thing she was used to hearing from her baby girl and she shivered from a frightened chill, but she didn’t want to overreact, assuming straight away that the Cindy was simply adjusting to the move. A new home away from familiar friends and routine did all sorts of strange things to children, so Erin finished bringing her coffee to her mouth and had a sip. Setting it back on the table, she said, “Well that’s sad. How did it happen?”
“They killed themselves. They died in the bathtub. Kathy says they made themselves bleed until they fell asleep.”
It was the first time that Erin hadn’t known what to say to her girl. Cindy had blurted out many strange things over her short life, sometimes in embarrassing situations, like the time she’d been rhyming “-unt” words and blurted out “cunt” in front of Brian’s mother and there had been red faces all around, but Erin had always known exactly what to say. This bit of surprising mortality, however, had stunned Erin into silence. She stood up and carried her coffee mug to the sink, trying to muster some words before Cindy said anything else. The words didn’t come.
“Kathy’s sad. Can you be her new Mommy, Mommy?” Cindy asked.
“No, Cece, I can’t do that. I am your Mommy,” she replied, then turned around to brandish her tummy at her daughter, “Yours and the new baby’s.”
“Kathy won’t like that.”
“Well, Kathy doesn’t have much choice. Now finish up your lunch and come and talk to me on the porch, okay?”
“Okay, Mommy,” Cindy answered.
Erin left the kitchen, passed under the arch where cindy had first mentioned Kathy, stalked down the hall, passed the crawlspace, crossed the foyer, walked out onto the porch and dropped into the bright red papasan chair that Brian had bought for her the previous weekend. She looked out at the road that passed by the end of their driveway and watched a handsome man in a linen suit walking down the lane. He disappeared behind the trees to the right, and by the time the distraction of the man was gone, Cindy was beside Erin waiting to talk.
Twenty minutes later, Cindy had been forbidden to play with Kathy ever again. ...
señor bubalo and the little girl of dodd house (282/365)
Cynthia McCallum met Katherine Dodd in a place most adults would find unusual, but to a 5 year old girl going on 6 like Cindy, finding Kathy in front of the crawl space beneath the foyer stairs seemed fortuitous.
Cindy had been lonely since they moved to the big house over the creek. It was summer and school seemed terribly far away with all of ther friends back in Masamee. To make matters worse, they’\d left Vanessa behind, the nanny Cindy had spent all her days with for as long as she could remember, and now her Mommy, who was usually off at work but was now trying to “sort out” their new home and do “everything on her own” before the new baby came, had no time for her. So Cindy was understandably lonely, and Kathy’s appearance, the appearance of a ready made friend, seemed perfectly reasonable to Cindy.
It took Cindy’s mother days to realize there was something odd about Cindy’s “new friend” Kathy. When Cindy first came to Erin and asked, “Can I show Kathy to my room, Mommy?” Erin’s distracted response (she was busy reading the instructions for her new breast pump) was, “May I.” Not wanting to disappoint her mother, Cindy corrected her question. “May I take Kathy up to my room?” Erin finally looked up at Cindy and saw her daughter standing beneath the archway to the kitchen holding her stuffed monkey. She said, “”Sure, Sweety,” without a second thought and went back to reading.
The next day, Cindy asked if she could bring Kathy to lunch. Erin set a place at the table for Cindy’s friend, fully expecting Cindy’s stuffed monkey to take a seat behind the extra sandwich and apple juice, but the seat remained empty. Instead, Cindy spoke to the thin air, relating to Kathy’s conversation to her mother as though Kathy was really there.
At first Erin had found the whole thing delightful. Cindy had never had an imaginary friend, and Erin had always wondered if this lack was a deficiency in Cindy’s development. She listened, asked playful questions and laughed at all the right places until Cindy started asking Erin about Kathy’s parents....