Rob E. Boley's Blog, page 8

Excavating Fossilized Fraggles and Other Creations

Earlier this week, I remodeled my daughter’s art gallery. See, for more than two years, one wall of my kitchen has displayed her art. Two long lines of cord ran the length of the wall over the kitchen table, supported by metal hooks spaced evenly about two feet apart. Clothespins held her artwork in place on the cords. Whenever she added something new, we’d just place it over one of the old pictures.

The kitchen gallery space featured comic strips, watercolors, sketches, school projects, and poetry. My girl produces a lot of creative output, and the gallery was always a nice conversation piece with visitors. Plus, it’s important to give kids a place to dedicated to their creations.

But over time, the wall felt too cluttered, especially since it overlooked our kitchen table. Plus, the eclectic rainbow of artwork overwhelmed  the kitchen’s orange them.

Recently, my daughter brought home this brilliant autumn forest painting from her after-school art club. It featured long skinny tree trunks and splashes of crisp fall colors – especially my kitchen’s trademark orange. So, I decided to frame it along with some of her other orange-prominent works and give them a permanent spot in the kitchen. My favorite of her orange collection is a marker drawing of Mickey Mouse taking a pee.

So, to make a long story short (too late), I moved her gallery into the hallway.

This time, I made some improvements. Instead of cord, I used thick metal wire. This looks more professional, somehow. Instead of one long wall, the new gallery is broken into three different sections on two separate walls. I also placed the gallery space lower on the walls, so that she could take ownership over what’s displayed. Finally, I made sure she had a tray to archive older works replaced by newer ones. Hopefully, that’ll keep the gallery from getting too cluttered.

The best part of moving the gallery was going through her old creations. I felt like an archaeologist at a dig site, except instead of excavating dirt to find bones, I was digging through art to discovery memories – like the time we painted out fingertips and used our fingerprints to make the bodies of characters from the old Fraggle Rock t.v. show.

Another favorite was her drawing of two superheroes she created: Miss Fart and her piggy sidekick Tea-Ball. It read, “Fun Fact: Miss Fart works out every day except Tuesday and Thursday! Fun Fact: Tea-Ball rides on a flying top!” I also adored this poem:

I love rain

springkl

springkl

springkl

if you whar a raincoat, itl

ringkl

ringkl

ringkl

Reliving the memories was great, but more touching was seeing the course of her development. Going through almost three years’ worth of creations was like a slow-moving flip-book. I could see how her drawings and words have grown. All her characters used to have these enormous head-sized hands with crazy-long fingers. Her phonetically-spelled words used to stand on wobbly newborn Bambi legs and stagger all over the page. It was a joy to see how her creations have matured.

I saved some and recycled others. You can’t keep everything.

So, now I’ve got this stack of older works. For the moment, I’ll file them away. At some point, I’d like to do something creative and interesting with them, though. I want to experience her growth again, but it’d be nice not to have to dig.

Pre-Reincarnating the Snow-Woman

Last week, my daughter and I built a snow-woman named Charlotte at the start of a long-enduring cold spell. Thanks to a charmed piece of broccoli used as her nose, the snow-woman came to life and began communicating with by sending messages to our elf, Chester.

Charlotte saw the world through plastic yellow glasses. What she saw must have pleased her, because she constantly wore a toothy carrot grin. Unfortunately, that grin was not to last. Higher temperatures and rain were on the way. My daughter wrote to Chester the elf and asked if he could, “…find some kind of magic charm to make Charlotte not melt in spring? Make her live forever?”

Chester explained that no one lives forever, but offered two options to help Charlotte survive the inevitable thaw: travel to the North Pole or cast a spell to transform her into some other creature, like a bird or plant. My daughter opted to transform our snow-woman into a bird.

Her choice made me happy, because I used to spend a lot of spare time birdwatching. Last year, I’d put a bird feeder in the apartment’s backyard, so that my daughter could watch the birds from her window. This idea never really took flight, so to speak. Her binoculars went untouched for most of the summer and fall, and I often forgot to fill the bird feeder.

The elf instructed us to create three items: a picture of the bird we’d like Charlotte to become; an ice sculpture of a star; and a poem of seven lines and forty-nine words. My daughter rocked out the picture and poem:

Charlotte

Snowwoman I promise for you.

With a star shaped ice cube.

And with a great, great poem of 7 lines.

You will be a bird that’s both beautiful and graceful.

You will fly through the wind and through the trees.

Charlotte, I think you should be.

A BEAUTIFUL BLUEJAY!

The thing about magic ingredients is that they sound easy conceptually. But as I searched my apartment, I found a disturbing lack of star-shaped items. So, I sliced out the midsection of an apple and used the star-shaped pattern of the seeds as a guide to carve a delicious star. I then wrapped the bottom of the apple star in aluminum foil to make a form. I filled the foil form with water and stuck it in the freezer. I ate the remains of the apple, as appropriate.

A day later, Chester left a note with our final instructions. We researched what blue jays like to eat – sunflower seeds and nuts – and purchased some of each. We also learned that blue jays don’t always migrate. Some do and some do not. Some migrate one year, but not the next. Scientists don’t know why.

But I digress. It was now time to cast our spell. While holding the ice star in our bare hands, my daughter read her poem three times. Her teeth were chattering by the end of the third reading. No one ever said magic was easy. Some of the ice star melted, spilled out of our hands, over her drawing of the blue jay, and into a glass. We sprinkled that water onto the seeds and nuts, and took the mixture outside. I ate a little along the way, which earned me a disapproving look.

“Really, Dad?” she said. “You’re eating the magic seeds?”

Outside in the biting cold, we stuck what was left of the ice star into Charlotte’s tummy. We removed her enchanted broccoli nose and sprinkled bits of brittle veggie on top of the seeds and nuts. The spell was cast. While outside, we filled the bird feeders and made sure to sprinkle some extra seed on the ground for the larger birds.

The next morning, we found a note from Chester: “The spell worked. I did birdcalls early this morning and a blue jay ate the magic seeds.” When that blue jay lays an egg in the spring, the baby bird will be Charlotte reborn.

We’ll be watching for her. In fact, I’m thinking this year I’ll remember to fill the bird feeders. I’m hoping the birds will have an audience.

Bedazzling the Snow-Woman

This week, Ohio succumbed to a massive winter beat-down. The temperature rarely rose out of the single or negative digits. It was the kind of cold that nibbled on your fingertips and whispered through your bones even hours after taking shelter indoors.

But before the temperatures dropped into the territory of ridiculousness, we had one perfect day of bright sun, fluffy snow, and comfy 20 degrees. On that day, my daughter and I had one of our best sledding adventures yet, in which we tried several times to sled down a hill on saucer sleds while holding hands and spinning each other around three times. We also built a snow-woman named Charlotte.

Our snow-woman had a toothy carrot grin, plastic yellow glasses, and a broccoli nose. We jabbed a thick stick jabbed through her midsection to make her arms. She stood slightly taller than my daughter and had a mop of stringy hair. No, really. Her hair was literally a mop.

The morning after we made her, we found a note from our elf, Chester, letting us know that Charlotte wanted a hat to look prettier. “She also said thanks for the broccoli nose,” Chester wrote. “The world smells nice.” We looked out the window, and sure enough, Charlotte was now wearing one of my daughter’s old hats. Chester was up to his old tricks.

My daughter wrote back to Chester that night, asking him to ask Charlotte how she came to life. In typical elf fashion, Chester replied, “Charlotte said to tell you that she doesn’t know how she came to life. I didn’t bother to tell her that I know how it happened. Ha! Ha! Ha!”

It took some doing, but we eventually got Chester to spill the beans. He revealed that he had used some Tooth Fairy dust from my kid’s room to charm the broccoli we used for Charlotte’s nose. It was that magical vegetable that brought her to life. He also mentioned that Charlotte would like some more accessories. So, on yet another frigid afternoon, the kid and I raided the craft bin and the fabric scrap bag.

Yes, I have both a craft bin and a scrap bag. I make our Halloween costumes each year. Don’t judge.

We fashioned earrings using pom-poms and bits of metal. We made a scarf out of an old pair of overalls. We patched together a bunch of fabric to make a skirt. And my daughter made Charlotte a lovely necklace.

Now, Charlotte’s looking mighty fine in our backyard. Except we face a big decision. My daughter asked Chester if he could “find some kind of magic charm to maker Charlotte not melt in spring? Make her live forever?”

The elf explained that no one lives forever, but did present two options that might help Charlotte survive the inevitable thaw: we can either help her migrate to the North Pole or cast a spell to transform her into some other creature, like a bird or plant. Either way, next week is bound to be exciting. And cold. Unrelentingly cold.

Jogging with Forklifts and Other Madness

Last week on the long drive home from Disney World, I introduced my eight-year-old daughter to the wonders of Mad Libs. She, her mom, and I spent over an hour inserting random adverbs, adjectives, nouns and verbs into unseen contexts. Hilarity ensued.

Since then, DIY Mad Libs have become one of our new pastimes. The other night, the kid and I stretched out on the sofa and created our own Mad Libs. We each wrote a page and then asked each other for various parts of speech. This occasion led to much giggling and such sentences as, “He ate a TACO faster than a ROACH can DANCE around the earth (ALL CAPS indicate the words that we mad-libbed)!”

The fun thing about making our own Mad Libs is that we can personalize them to our own lives, and put ourselves in strange situations. That’s how we came up with this little gem, which was based on our morning: “They JOGGED with their new cowgirl and cowboy FORKLIFTS. Then they SPRINTED at the kitchen ELF and typed CUCKOO CLOCKS on their laptops. Daddy made oat CARGO for brunch.” Or this lovely passage: “She curled up in the HOT TUB and slept as IDIOTLY as a BANANA.”

A nice benefit to Mad Libs’ lunacy is that it teaches kids all about the parts of speech. Before we played Mad Libs, my daughter didn’t know what an adverb was. Okay, she still calls it an “adjective that ends in –ly,” but that’s a start. And for kids who may be a little nervous about writing or who – gasp! – think writing can’t be fun, Mad Libs can introduce some of the many pleasures of the written word.

We’ve had hours of fun with this little game, and it cost us nothing than time, some scrap paper, and a bit of imagination. While it sometimes feels like time is far too scarce, we always have plenty of imagination on hand. And reams of scrap paper.

A Travesty of Magical Proportions

I spent the last week immersed in the many wonders of Disney World with my daughter and my ex-wife. It was a fantastic trip. We rode many rides, ate much good food, and saw plenty of entertaining shows. The brilliant thing about Disney’s rides is that they all tell a story. They engage you as a rider the same way that a great author would engage you as a reader.

However, all rides aside, most of my favorite memories have to do with the living things we encountered, be they people or animals – such as the nice couple at Epcot who randomly gave us FastPasses to the popular new ride Soarin’, giving us just enough time to ride it before having dinner at Garden Grill. Or the giraffe that stalked our vehicle during the Kilimanjaro Safaris ride at Animal Kingdom. Or when we meet Toy Story’s Jessie in the Magic Kingdom and she got mad that she wasn’t featured on my Toy Story Mickey Ears hat, so she wrote her name on the back in permanent marker.

The magic wasn’t contained exclusively to the parks, though. No, we had a fair bit of magic right in our own hotel room at the Wilderness Lodge.

See, the morning before we left for the trip, my daughter found Chester, one of her new Mickey Mouse elves, hiding in her luggage (click here for the full story about the elves). She took this as a sign that the elf brothers wanted to join us on our trip. Little did we realize what mischief they’d cause.

After our first day at Magic Kingdom, my daughter woke up the next morning with a new Belle doll snuggled with her in bed. As well, the elves had escaped the luggage and hidden themselves in the hotel room. “I bet they brought me Belle,” she said. “I hope they didn’t steal it.”

The next morning, she woke to find a new Jessie doll in her arms. “Well, I’ll be a Lincoln Log,” she said. After a quick search, she found the elves hiding on the lamp and by the coat hangers.

The same scene repeated itself for the duration of our trip. When we checked out of the lodge for the long drive home, we still had no idea where these new treasures came from. A couple days later, Anna was hanging out with me at my apartment when we received a phone call from her mom. She said that she’d received a letter from the Disney World Office of Security and Safety regrarding the elves’ behavior.

Anna freaked out, imagining the worst. “I was dreaming of traveling the world and being respected!” she said. “It’s a travesty!”

She had to wait two whole hours before she could read the letter at her mom’s house. According to the letter, security personnel had investigated some peculiar, after-hours activity on our MagicBands, the bracelets that served as our room keys and park tickets. The letter included some photos of the elves departing from and returning to the Wilderness Lodge during the night, and enjoying a Coors Light in the hotel lobby.

“At this point,” the letter read, “we can only speculate about the elves’ actions during their nightly excursions. We have no evidence – yet – to confirm this fact, but we believe that the elves made some unauthorized purchases in our retail establishments. While they left enough coins to pay for the items taken, they did not pay the necessary sales tax. As well, we believe that the elves raided both the Wilderness Lodge lobby fountain and lost-and-found. Most disturbingly, we strongly suspect that the elves placed some fruit on top of some of our Kilimanjaro Safaris’ vehicles. As a result, we had giraffes following the vehicles all day.”

Well, that at least explained why the giraffe was following our vehicle on the safari ride. The letter further asked that we not bring the elves back to the park. My daughter couldn’t have agreed more.

“We are not taking them to Disney, Great Wolf Lodge, or anywhere in the future,” she said. “Who knows what trouble they’d get into?” We decided that it would be best if we kept the elves apart – one at my place and one at my ex’s. That’s our plan, anyway, but it’s hard to say what could happen in the future.

The letter closed in typical Disney fashion: “Thank you, and have a magical day.”

And I’m sure that we will.

Me Doing It

The other morning, my daughter and I were talking about how to spend the day. I was off work and she had no school. We had plans to meet up with friends later for a movie, but the whole morning and early afternoon were wide open.

“We haven’t made a craft in awhile,” she suggested.

We discussed several options, including drawing, painting, or working with clay. We finally settled on writing and illustrating a poem. I love comic books, and think graphic novels can be a brilliant way to tell a story or memoir.  I’ve always thought that the nature of poetry lends itself to illustration, as well.

In the past, we’ve worked on our graphic poems separately, but this day we decided to make it a collaborative effort. We each wrote alternating lines, and in the end came up with a nifty lil’ poem.

Bluejay Over the River

A bluejay was flying

over a long, tangled ribbon of water,

Watching lily pads like mobs of green clay,

and nervous ripples around worrisome stones.

Watching the sun set in a red and yellow and orange mix.

She turned her tail on the dusk and dove into the wind.

she wished that she could skip stones like humans,

anxious pats of rock playing at bird then fish.

She decided to go back to her chicks as she started soaring through trees with tangled branches,

And only nothingness grabbed her.

My daughter has a knack for concrete description. I loved her line about the “mobs of green clay.” It was a solid metaphor, but also added some good tension to an otherwise pretty landscape. As we batted our words back and forth, we created a scene in which a blue jay is longing for something she’ll never have.

By the time the words were finished, my little one had to step away from the table for awhile. That was probably my fault. Near the end, I did spend quite a bit of time flailing for just the right word.

Later in the day, we co-illustrated with crayon. We alternated back and forth with rounds of two minutes each. I thought my favorite part of the illustration would be the sunset, because I love how my daughter blends colors. Except then she added a thought balloon for the bird showing a hand skipping a stone. The bird was thinking three words that most anyone who’s ever experienced longing can relate to:

“Me doing it!”

If All Goes According to Plan…

On Christmas morning, my daughter came downstairs at her mother’s house, eager to dive into her presents. I was there for the big moment, a tradition we’ve kept alive even after our divorce. My daughter’s Elf on the Shelf, Rasy, was nowhere to be seen. Rasy only stayed until Christmas, and then departed for the year – a fact that caused the kid no small manner of heartache.

Oddly, she found no presents from Santa waiting for her. Instead, she unwrapped a note rolled up like a scroll.

“This Christmas,” Santa wrote, “we have arranged a special treat for you with your parents. Mrs. Claus thought you’d enjoy this game. Rasy was quite impressed with you this year. Rasy and I have hidden eight Whimzies in this room (click here to learn about Whimzies). You must find them to unlock the secret code!”

Santa also apologized for his jittery handwriting and explained that his sleigh was very bumpy.

So, my daughter searched high and low to find her Whimzies. The little rascals were hiding in the tree, in the manger, and in all other manner of sneaky places. Each one had a tiny green scroll attached to it that helped her uncode this message from Santa: TWO RED SOCKS.

She pondered this awhile, and then found two Mickey Mouse elves – one in each of her red stockings hanging from the mantle.

A Disney World luggage tag attached to each elf’s arm unlocked yet another code, this time for a word scramble: LEBNDEAT. She pondered this puzzle for quite awhile. Perhaps if Santa had thought to include a hyphen, the scramble might have gone easier. At last, she figured it out, went to the end table, opened it up, and pulled out – a big Mickey Mouse.

This Mickey, too, had a luggage tag. A folded note inside the tag read, “In Ten Days…”

She opened the note.

“…you and your parents are going to Disney World!”

She frowned. “Don’t we have to pay?”

Her mom and I assured her that we had it covered.

“What about school?”

We further assured her that her teacher said it’d be okay. Finally, she smiled.

After a hearty breakfast, my daughter and I went over to my sister’s house for the day. We laughed, played games, ate a whole lot of pasta, joked, opened presents, and played more games. The magic wasn’t over yet, though.

Late that night, we arrived at my apartment. Santa had filled our stockings and left them under the tree. In her stocking, she found a Minnie Mouse doll. A note was wrapped around its leg – written on the back of a piece of Santa’s wrapping paper.

“If all goes according to plan, you will have received us at your mom’s house on Christmas morning,” the note began.

The message was from the two Mickey Mouse elves she’d found in her stockings. Apparently, the elves couldn’t risk sending the note with themselves and being discovered. “We decided to leave the elf guild,” they wrote, “to find our own way in life. We don’t want to build toys or make cookies. We love Santa and our elf family, but we want to see the world on our own.”

They asked her if she would host them for awhile, one at each of her homes. Unlike Rasy, she was free to touch them as much as she liked. “In fact,” they wrote, “we hope you will move us often and take us on many adventures.”

And I suspect she will do just that.

Don’t Get Stuck In Your Own Nightmare

These little guys are the Whimzies. Well, actually they’re the travel version of our Whimzies. See, Whimzies are little stuff animals about the size of a saltshaker. At our home, we have a collection of about twenty. My eight-year-old daughter has made a little booklet with a drawing and names for each of them. Every few days or so, one of us will hide these little critters all over the family room, and the other will have to hunt them out. The only rule is – just like with Easter Eggs – they have to be hidden in plain sight.

In the past, we’ve taken the Whimzies on the road with us. They’re fun to hide in hotel rooms or my mom’s house. On one visit to my mom’s, we forgot to bring them. So, instead, my kid made her own set of eight paper Whimzies to keep at her grandmother’s house. She even made a blue hot tub for them to hang out in when we weren’t there. Apparently, Whimzies are impervious to pruning.

Today, we played a few games of Whimzies at my mom’s house.  During the last round, my daughter hid the little guys. We found all but one – an orange cat. I walked and crawled all over my mom’s living room, checking ever picture frame, stack of books, cushion, holiday decoration, nook, and cranny. Even my daughter couldn’t remember where she hid it. Eventually, we gave up. It was time to go.

I kept thinking in those last few minutes prior to departure that I’d spy the lost kitty. On the desk? By the chair? In the magazine rack? Nope, nope, and nope.

“This is like a nightmare I can’t wake up from,” my daughter said.

The whole experience wasn’t a total loss. It gave my daughter the idea for a chapter book called Don’t Get Stuck In Your Own Nightmare.

She started writing it on the drive home. Periodically, I inquired about the Whimzies.

“Where do the Whimzies come from?” I asked. “What’s their back story?”

“I don’t understand what you mean,” she said.

This surprised me. After all, this was a girl who had dozens of stuff animal friends, each with a name, personality, and history. But the Whimzies, for whatever reason, were just stuffed animals. Once she got to thinking about it, however, she explained that the Whimzies come from a magical land, where they spend a lot of time hiding from each other. She said that one of the Whimzies at our home, a gold and white cat named Cristy Tuna, once had “…a great great great great great great grandfather who wanted to help a human but started to vanish and then disappeared and never came back.” So, that’s why the Whimzies hide from us.

Eventually, my daughter finished the first chapter of her new book. The opening just blew me away:

“My name is Jack Rome. Nightmares come and go, but what if you could not get out? I live in Ohio. My family is a pretty busy one. My little sister sells lemonade, my twin cousins, Lou and Sue, go to their candy fan club, my dad works at Wal Mart, my Grandma is always making fancy dinner recipes, my mom does stuff with her friends, and I run a babysitting service. There is a kid who comes a lot named Alice who I adore. Alice has short, blond hair, a red headband, pale skin, black thin glasses, and eyes that are the same color as blueberries.”

Wow. I adored the rich, concrete description of this Alice character. I loved the blueberry eyes. Her writing made me wonder if there wasn’t a hidden benefit to all this searching that we do. Maybe losing a Whimzy wasn’t such a bad thing. Maybe sometimes we need to lose something to force us to start paying attention to all the details.

“That’s why it’s called creative art.”

This weekend, my daughter and I whipped up holiday rice krispies treats for some of my co-workers. To make the process a little more interesting, we pretended the kitchen was the stage of a cooking show, Cooking For Cartoons. We assumed the roles of co-hosts Bruce Shockwell and Annie Bolini.

Talking to the imaginary camera is a great way to teach the girl a little bit about cooking, without her actually realizing that she’s learning. For instance, I mentioned that we were melting the butter and marshmallows over a low heat, and Chef Annie correctly explained to the audience, “Otherwise, you’ll have burnt butter.” She remembered that from a previous episode.

While the treats were cooling, we decided to write food reviews under the new identities of Gordon Belini (not to be confused with Bolini) and Mary Johnson. I suggested to Mary that we should Google some tips on writing food reviews.

Mary shook her head.

“Why not?” I said.

“I just want to do it my own way,” she said.

I explained that doing things her own way was fine, but that she needed to have some basic understanding about the traditional way of doing things first.That’s when I got the eye roll.

The disagreement quickly escalated into a full-on debate about whether art was more about learned skill or straight-up imagination. I took the side that art was a balance of both technical expertise and raw inspiration. I explained to her that in creative writing, it is sometimes okay to break the rules – but writers need a clear understanding of the rules first.

“You can have the greatest story in the world,” I told her, “but if you don’t have the technical skill to write it, no one is going to want to read it.”

She disagreed. “The only important thing is imagination. That’s why it’s called creative art.”

The argument never resolved. She ended up writing a pretty solid review anyway: “The taste of the unique pink rice krispy treats is crunchy with a hint of peppermint. The texture is rough and creamy. Smellwise it smells creamy and yummy. The looks of them are pink, green, and yummy. Overall it’s an 100% treat.”

I told her later that I was willing to say that imagination is very important to the creative process. I asked her if she was ready to admit that skill was at least somewhat important, too.

“Do I have to say it,” she said, “or mean it as well?”

“This is no fort. We’re in Japan.”

Submitted for your approval. A father and a daughter decide to spend a snowy weekend huddled inside a blanket fort. Except after a game of Paper, Rock, Scissors, the daughter looks outside the fort and sees not their living room but an exotic wilderness. “This is no fort,” the little girl says. “We’re in Japan.”

Although they built their play shelter in their living room, this structure now stands firmly anchored in… The Twilight Zone.

Cue creepy music.

There’s something infinitely magical about blanket forts. When I was a kid and had a friend spend the night, we’d transform the family room in the basement into one massive blanket fort complete with hidden tunnels and multiple chambers. These structures served as ancient temples, haunted houses, army bases, or just about anything we could conjure.

This past weekend, a whole bunch of snow smothered Dayton. The temperature dove into that icy realm below freezing. So, we canceled most of our plans and built a blanket fort in the living room. When we weren’t outside throwing snowballs, we stayed in the fort playing games, reading, writing, and watching old Looney Tunes and Twilight Zone shows.

The Looney Tunes inspired a spy mission on Friday night. We left the sanctuary of our fort to sneak into an alien’s hideout (my daughter’s bedroom). There, we found a coded message that read, “I am not from this universe.” We weren’t just dealing with a run-of-the-mill alien. No, it was a double alien. At some point, we traded our spy gear for magic wands and used a spell to defeat the alien. You have to be quick on your feet when doing improve with an eight-year-old.

Saturday night, we immersed ourselves in a cool Twilight Zone vibe. We ventured out of the fort only to find ourselves in a Japanese forest. While exploring, we narrowly escaped a bear and a lion. Eventually, we met a little girl named Chloe who had lost her parents. Eventually, everything was resolved thanks to a game of Paper, Rock, Scissors, a phone call, and a time warp.

On Sunday, I told my daughter that we needed to take down the fort. It’s always a little disheartening when all the books used as anchors must be reshelved and all the magic must be neatly folded away. As much as I wanted to have my living space back to normal, I also wanted to cling to that fantasy.

“Can we build another one very soon?” she said.

“Of course,” I said.

“Then tear this thing down,” she said.

And so I did.