A Swirl Of Colored Bubbles
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
There are some things in life, that are worth the mess.
Ruining neatly raked leaf piles by jumping into them. Anything having to do with glitter and/or sparkles. And, newly added to the list, colored bubbles.
Its not worth the mess to me, because I've still got green footprints from my back door to my bedroom, but its worth the mess to them.
Whenever I'm doing something with the babies, or thinking about doing something with them, I try to put myself in their shoes. I think back to my earliest memories.
I surround myself with the feel of the warm California air, listen for the water fountain that used to be just outside our door, or the one in my Papa's back yard - and I ask myself, using a voice of my Mother or my Grams or whoever, whatever it is that I'm thinking about asking my babies.
Only- I hear it as sort of an echo, and a little bit slower than it would have actually been said.
Of course I want to blow bubbles! What little girl doesn't?! I bounce up and down, feet not quite leaving the ground, the ends of my pigtails whisping into my face as I don't even try to contain my excitement.
But then it gets better.
Oh, my, God. ...how can one even explain all of the things that go through your head after being given a proposal such as purple bubbles?! You just can't.
And of course, that never really happened, I was just giving you examples of how it happened in my head, and well- after having experienced the thrill in the short 10 seconds that I did so for, I couldn't keep walking past the colored bubble display at the store. I had to stop, pick up one of every color, bubble gun included, and spoil my kids rotten with every ounce of imagination that my heart could give them.
No matter the cost.
No matter the mess.
Matter: memories.
The kinds of things that I remember, from being a kid, are the outrageous things that didn't happen every day. Making mud pies in foil pie trays by a tree- I had to keep going inside for more pitchers of water. Eating a big swirly lollipop that my parents would have never bought me- it was at the fair with my Grammy and Gpa, I remember wearing an outfit with fringe. Disney on Ice- I know that some kind of lighted handheld toy was involved, and when you're three or four, thats all it takes to rock your world.
We may live in a crappy small town with man eating spiders. The weather is almost always too hot or too cold. But by golly, there will be awesome memories. My babies are going to smile so hard that their faces hurt, whenever given the chance.
Charlie doesn't know how to blow bubbles yet. He tries, though. He gets the idea of it. He puckers his lips together, makes a blowing sound, and spits all over the place.
So while we weren't quite ready to unscrew the lid to his bottle of bubbles, we pulled out the bubble ray gun, loaded it, and fired off a couple rounds of awesome.
They didn't have pink bubbles, only purple. And next to pink, purple is the next best thing. So with every crank of the wheel, Eleanore's world expanded larger and larger- until she was a living breathing storybook character, floating around in a giant sky of colored circles. Bouncing off of one, landing on and popping another, sliding down the side of one and then falling onto another, and riding it up up up into the sky, until the sun reached out and gave it a burst.
Once we started, we couldn't stop. Regular bubbles- sure. Those are the kind of thing that you can do for 5 or 10 minutes at a time, and then walk away from. But green bubbles? No, those have to last forever.
The bottle had said something about being spill proof, so we foolishly trusted it and handed it off to Charlie, giving him the freedom to not blow bubbles as he pleased, expecting to hear spitting sounds and occasionally see an almost-bubble.
Instead, he painted the already green grass with it, as well as any inch of available skin he could find.
We had chosen the backyard, to try to keep the damage to a minimal. The last thing we wanted to do, was paint every house from here to Maryland Street.
And we did a pretty good job. Most of it stayed on the kids, or on the back patio. And then later in the house and in my heart, but-
It looks like a ray gun, right? A colorful bubble spitter outter, ray gun. The soap dripped down the fan, and off of the end of the bottle, reminding me of Smooze (google it). Eleanores shoes were covered, as were her hands and skirt.
And for once, she didn't care.
She usually gets caught up in the texture of anything that touches her skin, but this time, it was all kittens and rainbows.
Nothing can stop, the smoooze.
She did it. All by herself. It took a few tries, but after awhile, she was a bubble blasting pro.
I'm not sure I've ever seen her so happy in my life. Okay, maybe when she got her Hundred Acre Wood Friends for her birthday, but- My 4 year old little girl intuition had turned out to be right. Her smile was my smile.
Oh, right. And the cat was there too. Creeping around in the grass, stalking the scent of birds that had been there hours ago, even though shes never chased a bird in her life.
As fun as it was though, the magic did have to come to an end.
We popped each and every last bubble with our magic wands, left the mess for another day, and headed into the house to
Of course the next day they begged for colored bubbles again. It broke my heart to tell them no, but- it just wouldn't be what it was, if they had it whenever they wanted it, now would it? Magic isn't magical if it happens every day.
