Wednesday, March 17, 2010

St.Patrick's Parachute Pants

Hello and Happy St. Patrick's Day Blog Fans from, according to one of our water towers, Canada's Irish Capital!

This entry won't be a long as some of my other ones. After all, the pubs are now open and some of you have drinkin' to be gettin' on wit'! I will not be partakin' of the booze the colour of pond alge this year, but I am decked out in green and wanted to share a quick story wit'all of ye!

My little girl has loved to draw ever since she could hold a crayon properly. I am an extremely sentimental person and want to keep everything! So, you can imagine the chaos this can create in my mind if I need to clear some things out.(Because, let's be honest...no matter how cute or thought provoking or bizarre the drawing, test or card at hand, you can't keep everything!) School work, sheets brought home years ago from kindergarten covered in carefully draw alphabet letters and other such items are either recycled or made into new paper. Sorcha's drawings however, no matter how big or small, are put into scrap books. And I don't mean the fancy kind of scrap book. (Please I intend no offence to all the scrappers out there..."scrap booking" just isn't my thing.) No, I'm talking about the thin paged, pages that inevitably fall out and need to be taped back in, scrap book. The kind of scrap book I used to glue my many 100's of pictures of Michael J. Fox into. (I also had one filled with NKOTB pictures! Shhh! Don't tell!) But I digress...

Sorcha enjoys taking long walks down memory lane, in particular paths that lead to early childhood which being only 8 wasn't really that long ago, but when you're a child, 1 year can make a huge difference to who you are what you can do. A few days ago she chose the path marked "drawings" and proceeded to spend about an hour in the living room looking through a scrap book filled with drawings she had done when she was 5 and under. I had just stepped in the door after shopping on a Sunday at Walmart (ALWAYS a good time) when she asked "Mummy? Why did I draw a picture of a leprechaun parachuting?" Immediately I was on that memory lane with her and recalled in full colour the conversation I had with Sorcha at the time she'd drawn this picture for St. Patrick's day in kindergarten...




Sorcha: "Do you like my drawing?"

Me: "Yes, it's very nice. What is it exactly?"

Sorcha: "It's St. Patrick parachuting."

Me: "He's very high up...did he parachute from a space ship?"

Sorcha: "No, just a plane."

I think the drawing is wonderful. I particularly like Sorcha's bold attempt at the continents and how happy St.Patrick appears to be even though chances are he's going to burn to crisp upon entering the earth's atmosphere. However, I wanted to inject a slight amount of realism into her thinking and gently explained to Sorcha, at the time, that the only way for earth to look that way to a person was if they were in outer space. But I didn't have the heart to tell her that St. Patrick was not, in fact, a leprechaun and so did not dress like one, (well, not as far as I know anyway...I mean I never actually met the man. Perhaps this is exactly how he dressed! And when you get right down to it, I'm not even totally sure that this is how actual leprechauns dress.) and instead just complimented her on her very creative drawing which we then hung up along with her other St. Patrick's Day arts and crafts.

Sorcha sat on the stool waiting for an explanation as to why she, her 5 year old self, had thought to draw St. Pat up in Leprechaun finery. I told her the same story I just related to you and watched a look of confused bemusement cross her face. "Why would I do that?" she asked. "I guess you thought that's how St. Patrick dressed and I've no idea why you drew him parachuting." I said. And then she laughed. She laughed the laugh of someone who recalls with great joy and slight embarrassment the silly things they did in their youth.

May your St.Patty's beer be green, but not your face tomorrow mornin'.

Cheers and Cin!

2 comments:

sjb said...

That's a great story!

Happy St. Patty's t'ye!
Simon

Unknown said...

Love, love, love it! We had a 'leprechaun' visit our house who 'left sparkles and Irish coins' on the shamrock plants. What childhood is complete without a little magic? I love Sorcha's drawing! : )