Lesson 8 prompt 31

 Eeenie, meenie, minie, moe, catch a rabbit by the toe....

On my bed, my younger brother on one side and I’m on the other, she reads to us every night before bed time. Nursery rhymes are my favorite. Jack and Jill went up the hill, or the cow that jumped over the moon. I never question the logic and marvel at the strange pictures and the rhymes. Little Miss muffet who sat on her tuffet, Wee Willie Winkle who every night, with his lantern, walk the streets, or the fractured Humpty Dumpty. Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are. I never get tired of them and their quirkiness. When she closes the books I sigh, it’s time to go to sleep.

Years later I do the same with my daughters, at bed time we sit in their room with our favorite books all around.   We recite the same rhymes and enjoy the uncanny and odd, the fantasy that light the imagination. We keep adding new favorites to the bed time literary collection. Melinda May who ate a whole whale because she said she could, there are kids underneath my bed, cried little baby monster Fred, Whosever room this is should be ashamed! His underwear is hanging on the lamp. Huh? You say it’s mine? Dear, I knew it looked familiar! And our all time favorite.” I cannot go to school today,” Said little Peggy Ann McKay. My neck is stiff, my voice is weak, I hardly whisper when I speak. My tongue is filling up my mouth; I think my hair is falling out…

I can see my daughter, now a mother, in her living room so far away, reading to my granddaughter. I look at the books and laugh to myself. Little miss muffet still sitting on her tuffet, Wee Willie Winkle with his lantern and little Peggy Ann McKay, now has a Hebrew name but still looking for the most peculiar reasons to stay home.