“What would you like to order, GrammyPam?” Miss Lilly, the preschooler, stood in front of me with notepad and pen. She can’t write just yet, but she can sure scribble making wavy lines.
“I want some ice cream,” I answered her.
She handed me a pretend cone of vanilla ice cream and skipped off to take Grandpa John’s order.
When she’d come back I knew I’d have to do something about that ice cream and I didn’t want to pretend to lick it to death. Since she’s fast, I knew I had to be fast, too.
“Something came and ate it.” I said, “I think it was a gecko.” I was distracted with my laptop and tried to back out of her play, holding my hand to simulate emptiness.
She kept going, though, “I saw some foot prints in my res-taur-ant.” And she ripped off a little lined page in her little pad and handed it to me. Sure enough she had drawn me a picture of a web-footed footprint!
“Here it is,” she said.
“Something was moving, and it was the color of my walls,” she continued fabricating.
She paused, still jotting in her pad, "The wall color was green and he was green. Just like I said.”
“Oh, really?” I asked.
“Yah, his eyes were red. He’s kinda scary. Even he had red spots on his tail. He was so-o-o-o, so-o-o-o scary” drawing out the o’s with her little girl voice.
She moved from the brown leathered couch to the Murphy table in the kitchen where the magic markers laid.
“The mystery of the missing food, that’s what it’s called.”
Now, say mystery like she does, “MISS’- stoi- wee”.
“I saw something move and it was eating ice cream all along. It was a gecko,” she exclaimed.
From my spot on the love seat, I could hear Miss Lilly in the kitchen still talking, and still drawing. This long brown haired pony-tailed sweet smiling child is just a’talking away to herself.
“It’s a mystery. A real mystery! It’s the mysterious gecko that even ate your food!”
She finally concluded, “The mystery of the missing food, that’s what it’s called.”
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