[I come into the garden room and Cal is dancing by herself. It is… weirdly suggestive. I am horrified.]
Hey bud – what are you up to?
I’m dancing. It’s K.’s dance, from school.
Oh, I see. Your friend K. does this dance at school?
Yep. [Keeps dancing – I am terrified.]
Can we talk a minute?
Yep. [Comes over, sits down.]
Mummy. Is this one of those things that makes you sad?
Yes, it is. This dance looks too grown-up for a little girl.
[And by ‘grown-up’, I mean something that would not be out of place next to a pole. But I stop talking before I say it.]
You know, like some clothes are too grown-up, and some books are too grown-up… there’s just so much time, and I wish little kids could just be little kids, you know?
Oh. [Big smile] Like the big girls at the dance recital. They had different dances. Big Girl dances.
That is exactly right.
I will be a little kid for a while, Mummy, so I will not do that dance anymore.
Whither Earthlings 