Two five year old girls in a bathroom with two lipsticks.
“That’s not how you do it, you do it like this.”
With her little finger sticking up and a floaty air about her, she carefully and slowly applies the lipstick.
The second five year old has a go, applying lipstick as if she just can’t be bothered.
“you don’t do it like that,
that’s not like a woman,
look, you have a moustache.”
2011, shaping up to be a turkey.
Conversation with brother
(smiling and laughing with no jokes in sight, seems pleased to see me. Knows who I am, which can’t always be taken for granted. A little rough around the edges, answering yes to everything and then all of a sudden it begins.)
I know all languages.
oh ok
I can kill everyone
ok I can kill everyone too.
No. I can kill you.
would you like me to take you back now?
No, my dad is descended from a demon.
(actually sounds fair enough, given the circumstances)
I’m not sure how it’s panning out this time, it’s too close to know, but I do feel like I could kill everyone and maybe feeling that omnipotent is not such a bad thing.
Ever noticed how free a five year old is?
I mean to say she is and she isn’t. Of course she has the pressure of the parents which can act as a comfort, and most of the time she is a slave to her emotions. But then the emotions can take you to wonderful places, places where she does what she wants, when she wants : twirling around to some imaginary music, shouting, jumping and screaming for the hell of it.
Then something happens during adolescence that makes some kids withdraw in to themselves and no longer feel free to exist in space as they wish to, to move as they wish to, to do as they wish to, and of course there’s the breasts and the boys but that’s not entirely what I’m referring to. We could called it the development of the super ego or becoming self-conscious, beginning to realise that you are seen and that how you are seen effects how you are treated, and how you are treated can drive you insane if you let it.
You know all those things that you don’t tell little kids?
Well, I don’t tell them either.
Like for example today, a five year old is impressed that England has a queen and even more impressed with the possibility that england has more than one princess. But you don’t then procede to tell a kid that the queen is a giantic drain on the economy or that not all princesses are pretty and kind, and that infact some look like horses, and most adults see princesses as spoilt and demanding. But you don’t say this to a five year old but does the five year old know that when her dad calls her a princess with a smirk that he’s not being completely honest or that it is the father who made her into one anyway? Probably not and it’s not worth thinking about.
Sometimes when I see something awful or outrageous like some ultra violence or cruelty I compare my thoughts to a five year old and engender an innocence that makes me far too sad. One day each of these kids will see a tragedy or they’ll be one, and they’ll feel completely alone and they’ll think they are the only person ever to have seen this or to have felt this, and I only hope their tragedies are small ones, and that they come out of them relatively unscathed but they’ll never manage that as long as they continue to think they are princesses.
conversation with a five year old
would you like some of my banana?
no
why not?
because I’m a princess. (she’s right, she even has the dress)
ok but you can have some banana.
no I can’t
why not?
princesses don’t eat bananas, monkeys do.
One day she’ll learn about evolution. I only hope she’s prepared.
There are also things that you do tell a little kid, that you have to, one of the girls let me look at her adoption book this week. It seemed important to her but she also seemed thoroughly annoyed with it. The book contained colourful pictures and information about why a young child may be adopted (parents die, parents can’t look after the child) but it also included information on why people adopt children. It said they adopt children because they have love to give to the world and they want to love the child, they want to make the child feel loved. That nearly broke my heart, I put the book away, I think she was glad of it.
