Ginger at 2

Even though I promised it would be her turn to go next, it was a very sad-looking 2-year-old granddaughter who watched me leave with her baby brother to check out a nearby book sale. At the sale, the baby arched backwards until I pu t him down. He promptly walked under the table to the other side and grinned up at me. He was free — until I picked him up, paid for my books, took him to the car and strapped him in his car seat where he promptly fell asleep.
His sister and I dressed-up at 5 p.m. to join grandpa for dinner in the French Quarter. With her long black hair, black eyes and subdued demure manner, she looked like a princess in her navy blue knit sailor dress, white tights and black patent leather shoes. It must have been the clothes: she was a charming child the entire evening.
As we drove I pointed out the Christmas lights. She looked and lisped, “yots and yots of yights.” After several houses with ligts she switched to an emphatic “a whole bunch of lights.”
We parked and walked past tap dancing children, aging musicians and tarot card readers. WE stopped before a white bearded gentleman playing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” on 27 crystal goblets of water. We thanked him monetarily and found our restaurant. The lights were so low the man at the next table pored over his menu with a candle. I didn’t have a candle. The toddler, her troll doll and I went over to a small wall lamp to study the menu.
While we waited for our food, her grandfather folded his crisp linen napkin into a rabbit and a flower. I made it into a tent, a bed and a picnic blanket for her troll doll. As grandpa talked, the doll disappeared under the table to me. I slipped it in the back of her booster seat. The child stared at her grandpa wondering where the doll had gone. Long after she gave up she turned around, found the doll and burst into a delightful long, belly laugh.
When the meal came, we tied a napkin around her neck. She tasted grandpa’s jambalaya, pronounced my mushroom and cheese appetizer, ‘pizza’ and began eating happily.
We were barely through eating when she announced, “I want to go home.”
While we waited for our bill she politely told me two more times, “I want to go home.” I took her outside to watch horses clip clopping down the street.
As my husband left, the couple at the next table commented on her charming behavior. She had behaved impeccably.
She was almost asleep by the time we got home. The next day she was up early. She slipped her black patent leather shoes over her bare feet and clip clopped over the wooden floors waking her mother, “My what a lot of of noise you make clopping through the house,” her mother said.
The charming chid of the previous night nodded proudly. “I’m going to be a horse when I grow up.” Those shoes held the last vestige of our magical evening together. She took them off and went to eat breakfast. Within an hour our princess became a squalling monster and landed, loudly, in time-out.
It was nice while it lasted.


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