An M and E Post

When my niece E was quite little, she was fascinated with a book at my mother’s
house on Louis Pasteur that Mom’s husband had from his days as a teacher. It referred to germs as “the invisible enemies” but E kept calling them “the invisible anemones” — not realizing, of course, either her mistake or the fact that there were actually such things as anemones.

E and her younger sister M are older now, eight and six respectively, yet still delighted by books and still coming out with terribly funny things.

“Let’s pretend we are in the olden days,” my sister J overheard E saying to M recently. “Pretend it is 1980!” (“And no,” J added, “she did not mean 1880; I asked.”)

“E was telling me a story about a friend,” J shared in the same message. “I thought it sounded like the girl was being bossy, to which [E] said ‘No, Mom. She’s not bossy. She’s just the boss of the meeting, like Fred in Scooby-Doo.’”

Here’s one more exchange from a year ago, when I started logging this stuff to share
on the blog with J’s permission. J has just told the kids that she’ll be leaving them with the neighbors after they fall asleep so that she can pick up Mom-Mom, our mother, at the airport.

E: “Yeah!!! They are going to pretend to be our parents!”

M: “What happens if I get a charlie horse? Will [K] hug me like she is my mom?”

J: “Girls, I will be gone for a maximum of 15 minutes. You will be asleep the whole
time, you won’t even know I am gone, and I am always your mother.”


Related: What I Said • E Mail • I before Zzzzz