Sanky

Someone gave Joy a makeup bag to play with. It kinda looks like a doctor’s bag. Since the moment she got it I have coveted it. Not that I have anything to put in it—Joy has swiped all of my makeup out of my bathroom drawer and uses it (multiple times, daily) for her, her dolls, her Barbies, and sometimes for miscellaneous projects that she has contracted herself to do. Nevertheless, I dream of the day that I can have a bag like that, filled with pretty little vials and compacts and bottles and palettes of beautifully colored makeup. A girl can dream.



Anyway, THE bag is in the loft, otherwise known as ‘the toy box’ in my house where most of the playing gets done by my girls. (My backyard was rudely taken over by a pool, and while I am grateful for it in the summer, the rest of the year it is grossly underappreciated and even resented.) Back to THE bag.



Joy just brought it to me and said, “Mom! I think there’s a bug in my bag!” (I am not afraid of bugs, spiders, dead bodies—I was a CSI in a former life—so bring ‘em on! Just DO NOT make me have to deal with vermin. Anything mouse or rat-like gives me the ick and causes me to crawling skin which perpetuates the problem because I then imagine that something vermin-y is crawling on me.) OK, so, being the bug slayer that I am, I reached into THE bag to pull out the bug. By this time both Joy and Marlo were concernedly and apprehensively watching to see what kind of bug I was going to pull out of THE bag.



I could feel that it was just a piece of lint, so when I pulled it out I pretended that I let it go and said in a loud, shrill voice, “Oooh-hoooo!” I thought this might startle or shock them a little, but no. This little outburst was apparently the funniest thing both of them have every experienced to date. So now I have done it 272 times and it never loses its novelty. Joy fell down on the floor, with big belly laughs shaking her whole body. Marlo was laughing so hard that she couldn’t shut her mouth and a long strand of drool started to pool in THE bag. (OK, maybe now I don’t want that bag anymore.) But pretending to throw a pretend bug at them is very funny.



When I was little we went somewhere (the whole family) and stayed in a hotel. And we all stayed in the same room. For some reason I want to say that The Editor and I slept in a bunk bed. (Are there bunk beds in hotels or did my over-active imagination just make that up?)* Anyway, there was a book on the desk with inspirational stories or something like that. And so The Editor was reading to me from this book and something had been written by someone by the name of Sanky. And for whatever reason, that was the funniest name we had ever heard. All night long we laughed and giggled about Sanky. (I am giggling right now—don’t ask me why.) We drove my parents crazy. To this day, all The Editor has to do is whisper “Sanky” to me and it starts all over again.



And so, seeing my girls laugh, over and over, at something that isn’t really all that funny, makes me smile because that secret “language” of sisters is one of the most beautiful things in life. And if you can’t have makeup, well, you gotta get the beauty anywhere you can!


*Note from The Editor: It wasn't a hotel room, it was a church retreat at Camp Arrowhead, I think. But some hotels do have bunk beds, Gigi and The Norwegian (Gigi's husband and The Editor's and Busy Body's father) and me (7 months pregnant) and my husband (The Italian) and Bubba and Stump spent the night in a room with bunk beds. We were supposed to stay awhile and we checked out 6 hours after we checked in. But, that's a story for another day.

Note from Gigi: I used to tell Busy Body that I was praying that someday she would have a daughter just like her, because then, and only then, would she understand some of my reactions. That I have lived to see the day has brought me great joy (through Joy--and Marlo) Don't you think my previous phrase is a vast improvement on "I told you so".


Rebuttal from Busybody: If I apologize profusely and with all of my heart will I be able to un-do the sassiness and the antics that I now have to deal with daily?

Posted by The Editor for All