Storytellers come in all shapes and sizes, of course, and ages and colors, races, religions, genders, and they can show up at any time and any place.
Today, during a play date with my
almost-three-year-old companion, who's truly become one of my best friends over the past year or so, on a very hot East Bay day, in an uncrowded park, while we were sitting on a bench, a little girl walked over to say hi.
"Is that his bike?" she asked me, eying the small contraption parked nearby. Given that he was decked out in a bright turquoise helmet and knee pads, this was a logical inference on her part.
And I confirmed that it was, indeed, his bike.
"Would you like to try it out?" I asked her.
She narrowed her dark brown eyes, evaluating Luca's expression, and didn't answer.
Luca got a distant look in his large blue eyes, looked off in the distance, and said softly, "I don't know. She would have to wear these (tapping his knee pads) and this (touching his helmet)."
"She a big girl," I answered, "and I bet she knows how to ride a bike already, where as you are just learning."
"How old
are you?" I asked her. "Five?"
"I'm eight," she said, with a frown. She had very long hair, sort of brown with hints of sunshine, tied in braids, with long bangs that partially hid her eyes from view, except when she swept them aside, which was often.
"I have a bike, my Dad got it for me, after my first one was stolen. That one was a Barby bike, my new one is, um, a Lady Bug bike."
[Intermission] Note to reader:
Hang in there, this story gets much better soon.
"Why don't you take it for a ride," I suggested to her, as I turned to my grandson. "It's okay, right, Luca."
He nodded.
She did, under his watchful gaze, then came back and parked it next to us. The two children climbed on a sort-of three-way teeter-totter and bounced around for a while, in silence, though he laughed a lot. When the girl got off and walked over to the nearby swings, Luca got off and jogged along right behind her, like a puppy.
When she climbed on the one big-kid swing, however, he stopped, watching her for a while, then slowly came back over to me. "She's swinging," he sighed.
We played in the sandbox for a few minutes; then the girl returned.
"How old is he?" she asked me, again fixing her eyes on little Luca as if she were trying to make sense of him. (He's big for his age and he has a very large vocabulary.)
"I'm two and a half," piped up Luca. "Actually, you are 362/365ths," I corrected, being the math-nerd-Grandpa that I am, and told her, "He'll be three on Saturday."
"A raccoon visited my yard," he suddenly blurted out.
The girl came closer to once again study him, now with a furrowed brow. "A family of raccoons live on my roof," she said. "My Grandpa got a ladder and went up to repair the roof. One of the baby raccoons fell off the roof."
"Oh wow," I said. "Was it hurt? Did it land on its feet?"
"No," she said. "I caught it."
"You caught a baby raccoon as it fell off of your roof? How big was it?"
She indicated it was a few inches long.
By this point, Luca was mesmerized. Maybe I was too. Raccoons have been a very big deal for both of us over recent months, ever since he found out from his Papa that these nocturnal creatures sometimes visit his yard. On several occasions, I have pointed out their paw prints in the mud to him. One night, he even saw one!
But to catch a baby raccoon falling through space as this girl said she had done was a tale so far out of either of our imaginations until today that it seemed, well, imaginary.
Were we dreaming this story?
I took a closer look at our visitor. She was quite small for an 8-year-old and looked like she might be part Latina.
"I grew up in Florida," she offered, as if reading my mind. "I speak Spanish and English." We broke into a bit of Spanish, which she then thoughtfully translated for Luca.
"He speaks French," I told her, "but he usually won't do it when asked."
"I can't speak French," she said, "but my Mom is teaching me Chinese." She then proceeded to count to ten in Chinese (perfectly) and I spoke a few simple words (hello, thank you) back to her.
"My hair is really long, see?" She undid her braids and shook it free, and it fell halfway down her body. "I'm never going to cut it."
After that, she was off, disappearing across the park out of our view.
"She's gone," said Luca.
"Did you hear what she said about catching that baby raccoon?" I asked him.
He looked up at me.
"I was impressed, Grandpa," he said.
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