Picture it: Still small-town Indiana. Same limited dining options. Same cast: A two-year-old, a four-year-old, our good friends (the kids’ grandparents), the Hubs, and me.
I’ve done the living-only-once thing with toxic neon ice cream (see last week’s blog). My gag reflex has calmed. My shins are numb and my ribs ache from Miss CK’s wiggling all over my lap. She’s finished her ice cream and most of mine, and Baby Sister fell asleep one-third of the way through her orange sherbet and is snoring on Grandma—whose untouched steak and potato remain encased in Styrofoam.
The men, bless their hearts, are still enjoying their meals. (In the case of the Hubs, I can’t fault him; he does live with me and if he wants to indulge in someone else’s culinary competency, have at it.)
This leaves CK bored—again. And since restaurants usually frown upon their patrons racing from room to room looking for pegasuses and unicorns, settling gnome wars, and dodging in and out of Forests of No Return, we must stay at the table—or in the general vicinity of it.
But, as it happens, in our general vicinity is a working water wheel, eight-ish feet in diameter, that draws from a shallow pool of water walled off with creek rock. I offer to escort CK to the edge where we can sit and watch the wheel do its thing. The gentle splashing is calming. Or would be in other circumstances…
Then she notices them.
The scattered pennies at the bottom of the pool. A couple of nickels. Either the staff have very recently cleaned this out, or folks just don’t carry coins like they used to…
“What are those for?”
I’m almost giddy (or all that ice cream food coloring has hit my synapses and is getting things stuck). I believe this to be the first experience Miss CK has had with coin wishes and I get to be the one to impart this all-important piece of wisdom. “You toss a coin into the water and make a wish.”
“Then what?” She’s all in, staring down at the coins, boredom forgotten.
“Then you wait and see what happens. See if your wish comes true.”
Her eyes about pop out of her head. “Can we make a wish?”
My heart sinks a little bit. I brought gel pens. I have a writer’s notebook. Five other pens that aren’t gel pens. My keyfob attached to the fuzzy purple keychain. I have suckers, smelly-good spray, earbuds, and touchy-feely sensory deal because my unhinged child demands such things (Couch Lady insists I haul around this bag of "grounding" tricks, but that’s a blog for another time).
I also have adult-ier things like a credit card, driver's license, and a library card (one can always wish a library is just around the corner).
What I do not have are pennies. And I know Hubs doesn’t have any pennies, and even if he did, he’s too far up into that fried chicken to get to them.
“I don’t have any coins.”
She jumps up from the stone ledge and bounces back to the table, braids flying. “Mawmaw! We need pennies.” My friend rolls her eyes a little bit, she is after all, balancing a snoring toddler on her lap. But she manages to dig out her wallet and…
It happens again. It happened on the unicorn hunt a couple of months back. I’m a little kid again. I find I’ve also moved from the stone ledge in front of the giant water wheel, and I’m standing. In line. Behind CK.
With. My. Hand. Open.
I’m ready for my pennies, please. I catch myself and glance around the room at the other diners. No one’s paying any attention to us. They’re all firmly in the here-and-now reality. No one knows that, for a brief moment, I’m a four-year-old.
Mawmaw—I mean my friend—gives us each two.
That’s all she had, and I’m surprised she had that many.
Thinking back on this, I should’ve been an adult-ier adult and handed mine over to CK, but, in the moment, I’m a child with two shiny wishing pennies. And, in my defense, I’m to be the one to show CK how the process works.
We approach the pool. “So, you toss the penny in like this.” I drop my penny, watching it hit the bottom, twirling on the way down. “And make your wish.” I close my eyes tight and say, “I wish I was a unicorn.”
(I don’t really want to be a unicorn, but I do want to prove to CK that they could possibly be real. To emerge victorious in what looks to be a years-long battle, if I must transform into a horse with a horn, so be it.)
Her eyes get big. She mimics me. Same toss of the penny. Same scrunched-closed eyes.
Same wish.
(Now wouldn’t that be something? A middle-aged unicorn and a four-year-old unicorn traipsing around the Hoosier cornfields? We’d put small-town Indiana on the map. Move over Big Foot and Loch Ness—
I’m getting ahead of myself. Be an adult-ier adult, Beth. Focus. You’ve got a blog to finish.)
We each have one penny left.
“Okay, now you go first. I want to hear what you would really, really wish for,” I say.
In goes her last penny. Scrunch go her eyes. “I wish I were a mermaid!” Emphasis on mermaid and now we have the attention of a nearby table. But they grin and go about their really real fried chicken.
“How will I know if it came true?” She looks up at me with big brown eyes.
“Well, at some point, you might grow a horn right here.” I tap the middle of her forehead. She giggles. “Or you’ll wake up in the morning with a fishy tail.”
Given the shocked look on her face and the fact that she whips her head over her shoulder to check for, uuhhh, developments, it’s now that I realize CK has totally suspended disbelief. She is all in.
“I still have legs.” She stomps and says this so flatly that I can’t tell if she’s upset or relieved. Or sensing… something.
I reach up to my forehead, feeling for the tip of that horn to protrude any second now. I find my belief beginning to suspend, even though I’m the one spinning this tale.
Or tail.
Ooof. Careful now, or we’ll go all the way down the rabbit hole…
She spins around to me. “It’s your turn again.” She’s as excited for my next wish as I was to wait for my shiny pennies to wish upon.
I toss in my last coin with a plop. Scrunch my eyes closed and say, “I wish I could go to the moon!”
Yeah… I should’ve caught more than a clue by now. So, here are the rules when you pretend things with Miss CK. Everything pretend could be real. Like really real. One-hundred percent suspended disbelief.
Even for silly wishes.
Or maybe especially for silly wishes.
So be very, very careful what you wish for.
“Nooooo! You can’t do that!” Her demeanor went from wonder to shock.
“Why not?”
“Because you’ll go and I’ll be here and I’ll miss you if you leave.” Panic and clinging ensue.
Be still my heart. We sat back on the ledge, and I explained that if I went to the moon, I’d only go for a minute and then come right back. I’d bring her a moon rock as a souvenir.
This seems to settle the matter and she turns her attention back to the pool. We count the pennies on one side of the wheel. Then the other.
She leaves me sitting on the ledge and runs to Mawmaw, hoping for another round, but, alas, the bank is empty.
She returns to my side. “We can just use those. And have lots more wishes.” She points to the scattering of coins along the bottom.
“Oh, we can’t do that. Those are other peoples’ wishes.”
She looks confused.
I tread carefully, not wanting to give the kid nightmares. “If we take them, there’s no chance someone else’s wish will come true. We wouldn’t want anyone to take away our wishes.”
Her wheels spin much faster than the giant water wheel. I’m waiting for her to try to retrieve my moon wish and force a do-over, but she doesn’t.
Turns out, she’s filing the entire experience to talk about later.
The next time I see CK, she’ll tell me she’s been checking for horns and tails, with no such luck.
The next time I see her, I’ll likewise report that I haven’t been to the moon. And no horn for me, either.
Weeks later, when I happen to pay cash for suckers and pens and a new keychain, the cashier will hand me four shiny wishing pennies. And I’ll smile.
They’ll be tucked safely between my unhinged inner child items and the adult-ier things like credit cards, licenses, and that magical portal to other—I mean my library card.
And I’ll be ready next time. In case a fellow human of any age wishes to suspend disbelief, even for the few seconds it takes to toss a penny into a pool and wish for the magical.
Or for the moon.
