Fancy Day

This afternoon my 5-year-old granddaughter bobbed near the pier with the neck edge of her lifejacket hugging her chin: a miniature human cork.  I stood nearby, the adult helper waiting for her little sister to dismount the flexaboard.  But the tiny flexaboard-rider was still several minutes away, zooming over the water behind our fishing boat.  It seemed the right moment to broach a topic of conversation with Clara.

“Clara!  I have an idea I’ve been thinking about, and I want to tell you.”  I pulled the straps on her lifejacket until we were eye-to-eye and nose-to-nose.  My voice fell to a whispered hush, as if to share a secret.  “I’ve been thinking.  Maybe you could come over to my house one day a week by yourself for a special day.  We could do some baking, or crafts, or go to the story hour at the library.  What do you think?”

Her gaze froze on some faraway spot while processing this information. Then she smiled broadly and kicked the water for emphasis. “Yes! Let’s do it right now!”

“Not right now – your other family members are all here, and we’re doing water sports behind the boat, and we’ll be having dinner in a little while on the deck.  I’m talking about another special time with JUST YOU AND ME.”

She thought for several seconds, and then it registered.  Her eyes lit up. “Okay!”

“I think we should call it Clara Day.  Do you think that’s a good name for our special day?” I asked.

Let me insert here that this child thinks outside the box.  She’s good at illusion - one of those creative sorts with fantastic stories on the tip of her tongue.  She’s also thoroughly “pink” at heart, and loves purses, jewelry, feminine clothes, and all things girly.  So her reply didn’t surprise me. 

“I think we should call it FANCY DAY," she said without hesitation.

So Fancy Day it is.  We’ll begin in a couple of weeks when her home-school kindergarten calendar kicks in.  Our first Fancy Day could include a lesson in elementary counted cross-stitch and a trip to the library to hear Miss Juanita, a retired pre-school teacher, read a few stories. 

I have no doubt it will be fancy – extravagant when compared to an ordinary day.  Snazzy.  Bigger than life.  And I also have a feeling ongoing Fancy Days may challenge me, a plain-Jane country girl gone grandmother, to enter the princess world of childhood.  There I just might rediscover a realm beyond the practical, and remember how to think like a child who is unafraid to dream.