LOVER OF SLIMY THINGS
There is a phase of toddlerhood when a child can walk, talk and absorb information in the “real world”, but still largely operate on a magical, imagination fueled plane of existence. This was especially true for S. One of my favourite S-isms was a frequent habit of spontaneously breaking into dance mid stride while walking down the street. One moment she is making (slow) progress towards school, the next she is doing a little jiggy jive, then back to walking as though it never occurred. Ten feet later, her inner Elvis would burst forth anew. It was awesome. S oscillated between being completely immersed in her inner world (which, for certain, contains Pegasuses), and at the other end of the spectrum (/rainbow?) taking in more of the world than she was able to absorb.
She would often be so overcome with excitement over what she saw (both in her head or in the world) that she would forget to breath. When this happened her mouth would open in a “Ooo!” shape, her arms would bend up, and her hands would flutter like butterflies. She looked exactly like a baby bird about to be fed. We thought she was having seizures and took a video of her mid-flutter to the doctor. He said she would grow out of it, which physically she thankfully did, and mentally she thankfully did not.
Every outing with S, then and since, is an opportunity to discover wonders at every turn. She used to spend hours looking through the stones (aka gravel), picking out every rock that spoke to her. Little creatures, the slimier the better - worms, snakes, slugs, frogs, newts, salamanders, would be named (“Nigel” the baby snake being my favourite) and cherished. [1, 2]
A favourite memory of this innate, slime oriented Jane Goodalism was in Florida. We were walking the beach after a red tide event had deposited an entire ecosystem of marine life up onto the shore. S was probably around two. About two hours into the 30 minute excursion (excursions with S took 4x longer), we encounter a field of jelly fish. Hundreds and hundreds of them. S is fascinated, and distressed. She went from jelly fish to jelly fish, squatted down and gently prodded each with a stick she was carrying. At first we told her not to poke them, but there was a this fairy godmother quality to how she was using the stick that made it clear that this was no ordinary stick. It was a magic wand, imbuing each jelly fish with magic S powder with each careful, deliberate tap-tap.
S wouldn’t leave the beach until she had tapped every single one of the jelly fish with her wand stick. Every one of the hundreds…thousands? It felt like thousands. At the time this quickly became annoying, but now, having watched this exact innate desire to save the natural world become the driving force of her life, I look back on this original (origin?) story with gratitude. And who knows? The next day the jelly fish were all gone - perhaps magically resuscitated and returned to the sea?
I choose to believe.
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Once she was petting a frog so much (think "Mice & Men") that J got concerned and rescued it from her. Moments after returning the frog to the lake, a rat snake came along, snatched it up, and proceeded to swim victoriously around with the frog’s two hind legs sticking out of its jaw. An early lesson that nature is hardcore. (Also, Nigel the baby snake got run over by a car and we had to bury his smooshed 3” long body).
The love of slimy amphibians continued. At one point she put together a dossier on Axylotyls, why they make the best pets, and how, if we truly loved her, we would let her buy herself one. She got about two sentences into her power point (there was a power point) when I blurted “Absolutely not!” while doubled over in laughter. (I can on occasion (often) be very juvenile, as a parent and in general). To be fair to her, an axylotyl starts out looking like cuteness incarnate. To be fair to me, it ends up looking (13 years later (another reason not to get one)) like the evil eels from The Little Mermaid - except uglier.