Imagine

 I am a very left brained person. I excel in areas that involve math and measurement, things that are concrete. I actually met my husband when I took art class in high school, for the third time. Who drops art? I do, because it was ruining my gpa and I hated it, completely left brained. This has never been that much of a problem, I have tried to stick with my strengths, but that is no longer an option. You see, I have a 2 year old, Chloe. Chloe exists, for the most part, in something very far from reality. Some people refer to it as play, make believe or pretend. However, Chloe takes it a few degrees farther than what I believe these imply. For example, Chloe might say that she is hungry and wants a snack. However, when I go to the kitchen she throws a fit and drags me to her kitchen where she makes snacks for the two of us and a few of her favorite dolls and animals. For just over a week I had the distinct displeasure of being referred to as Mother Gothel. Chloe was Rapunzel, Jared was Flynn Ryder (he always gets to be the prince!) Claire was Max the horse and I was the evil mother, lovely. Chloe even referred to our apartment as 'the tower' and would pretend like she had never left it. You can understand why I was excited to find out that the script had changed. Chloe was Ariel, Claire was Scuttel, Jared was King Triton and I was Sebastion, yeah! Since the story line was changing I figured I would take things a little further for fun. That is when I told Chloe that Claire was indeed, a real mermaid and that is why Claire does not walk or talk. Claire laughed out loud and grinned from ear to ear as I told the tale of the day that we found her on the beach, it was fantastic! She often has to hear the real explanation of what rett syndrome is and it was obvious she preferred this explanation for our circumstances. After a brief pause while Claire laughed, Chloe spoke up with a seriousness that was downright different from anything I had ever seen from our little blonde bit of variance. She corrected me, "but Claire talks!" Silly me, how could I be so mistaken. Claire can't be a mermaid, because she does, in fact speak. It was so precious. So we will go on pretending, because it is fun and we can. But make no mistake about it, Claire talks, just only to those who listen.