A Visit from My Niece

A few weeks ago, my parents came to visit. With them came my niece, whom I’ll call “Rachel.” Rachel is 8, and was on spring break. Perfect timing.

I had so much fun with Rach. She is a very easy-going, very articulate, and very funny. The first thing you need to know is how often she turns cartwheels.

“What do you want for lunch, Rach?”

“Clam chowder” (cartwheel, cartwheel). “Can I have a rootbeer to drink?”

“How much milk did you drink today?”

“Ohhh” (cartwheel, cartwheel).

“Just drink one more small glass, and then you can have all the rootbeer you want.”

“Oh-“ (cartwheel) “kay.”

“Wanna play ‘Ruckus’ with me?” (cartwheel)

“Sure.”

“Will you shuffle the cards and pass them out?” (cartwheel)

“Sure. Go find out if Grandma wants to play.” (cartwheel the whole way over)

Rachel loves to do what she calls “chitty-chat.” So there we were, chitty-chatting while she occasionally did cartwheels when suddenly she came out of a cartwheel to pronounce, very gravely, “your house smells like cinnamon.”

“It does?”

“Yup.” (cartwheel, cartwheel)

“Your other house did, too.”

“Well, I guess that’s a pretty good thing, huh. I’d hate to have a stinky house.”

“Yeah, it is a good thing, and I know, because I have a sensitive nose.” (cartwheel)

During one of our chitty-chats, Rachel told me about some extensive dental work she had done. We talked about it for a long time and then moved on to other subjects.

“By the way,” she said, “you have plaque on your teeth.”

“I do?” I asked, unable to resist bringing my hand up to my mouth.

“Oh yeah,” she confirmed.

“Oh, for heavens’ sake,” I said.

“Well, don’t worry too much about it. I’m sort of an expert on teeth, so I don’t think most people would even notice.”

Rachel hated drinking her milk every day. My mom and I would say all sorts of things to try and induce her to improve her attitude, to no avail.

“At least it’s not powdered milk, which is all we had when I was growing up,” I said. “It was deee-sgusting.”

“And just think about all the children in Japan,” my mom said.

“Why?,” asked Rachel.

“Well, they have a nuclear power plant problem and they can’t even drink their milk right now, because they’re not sure it’s safe.”

We talked briefly about the earthquake and tsunami and how terrible it all was while Rachel looked on, thoughtfully. Finally, she took a deep breath and said wistfully, “I wish I lived in Japan.”

“Why?,” my mom and I cried, horrified.

“Well, it might be bad, but at least I wouldn’t have to drink milk.”

When Rachel visited last year, we did a lot of walking around. She came up with a classification of streets—busy streets were “community streets.” Side streets were “neighborhood streets.” If we were deciding on the day’s activities, she would often ask, “well, how many community streets will we need to cross to get there?” At first, we couldn’t figure out what she meant. Later, I thought it was a brilliant, kid-sized way of figuring out city traffic patterns—and communicating how scary some elements could seem.

I was delighted to find out that she remembered her designations, and would occasionally call them out when we were walking around. But this year, there was glee in her voice. “Watch out,” she would holler, “here comes a community street!”

One night, we played “salon.” I was the client, and Rachel was the technician. We started making up personas along the way. I can’t remember mine (excepting the name of my husband, which was Prince George Von Vilkening Von Vilkenstein, which Rachel thought very funny), but Rachel not only owned and ran the salon (and attended to clients), but she also owned and ran a horse farm, and also a dog pound, and also, she had some clients in California—in the entertainment business. She also had two kids. I asked her what she did for fun, and she said, “well, I play with my kids, or go out to eat with my husband. But mostly, I play with my dogs and horses.” The game went on for several hours. By the time it ended, my hair had never been combed so thoroughly, my hands could not have taken one more spec of moisturizer, my feet were sopping wet (don’t ask), and there was water EVERYWHERE on our hardwood floors. But I couldn’t have been happier.

I sure do miss that kid. And her cartwheels, too.