A Rare Gift

Although my grandchildren don't realize it yet, and probably won't for many years, they are being given a rare gift: a father who plays games with them. No, they aren't old enough for T-ball and baby soccer; they are still at the very imaginative stage where they want to act out adventures a la "Blues Clues". It's inconceivable to them that adults wouldn't want to join in the fun.

Last Saturday Zaya decided that Lupe, his stuffed wolf, had become a "detector" and was going to "discover mysteries". As per usual, that became a theme to intermingle with the adventures of Mario and Luigi, stolen from video game worlds.

Mim came running in to the den on a mission:
"Please, Daddy, won't you play an adventure with us?" she asked with a baby charm.
"Sure," he answered, "What character are you going to be?"
"I'm going to be...Lupe."
"So who will I be?"
"You can be Peach."
"Peach?"
"Yah"
"Couldn't I be someone a little less girly?"
"Ok."
"I'll be Mario"
"Yes, and Luigi can come with us. Come'on, Luigi," she yelled to her brother, "Let's have an adventure!"

So they were off...off to the far away living room to use their "special skills", lighting the night with the white flashes from Luigi' fingertips and shooting down spiders with Mim's red fire balls so they could eat the amazing apple star fruit huddled under a small, promotional blanket for the local football team--a blanket that has yet to be used at that kind of entertainment. Daddy Mario assured them that the blanket was a "floppy submarine." His "skill" for the adventure lay in "singing old Beatles' songs badly". His two cohorts weren't sure how this skill would help the adventure, but they loved the submarine and the song--We all live in a floppy submarine-- that served as the roar of its engines as they tunneled through the deep blue sea. "

In a few minutes the blanket submarine slinked into the den, all three characters crawling under it, and emerged at the golden chair, where it docked. Mario slipped out of character long enough to whisper to my daughter and me in the kitchen that he needed some dinosaur sounds. We produced them: I was the tyrannosaurus and Babystepper was the saber-toothed kitty---lots of growling and meowing. We were rewarded for our efforts with showers of white and red fire balls. Then the submarine submerged and slid back into the far away living room.

Few children can say that on a Saturday, after a challenging week of solving problems most people aren't capable of understanding, their father makes some time to enter into their little world--a world they, themselves, will outgrow very quickly and remember only faintly.