We were at grandma’s house this afternoon, with Sonia (4 yo) “building” books – drawing stories and then we were supposed to glue them together. But as I was waiting for her to write the book of “Piggy Wiggy” (her invented character), I grabbed her guitar and started fooling around with it. Then Sonia took over. I have to write this down today; otherwise I’ll forget the exact details in no time.
She touched the strings a little harder and I exclaimed “wow, that sounds just like Sonia running and climbing and riding her bike!”. She was so receptive immediately that this could turn into a new game and asked me “How do we play a blanket, mommy?”. I said I don’t know, let’s look at one and see how it feels like. Sonia decided it looks “soft and warm and cozy”. Ok then; let’s see how do we describe it using the guitar. And she touched just one string at the time, very gentle. Then she discovered by herself a very cool move – we called it “the scrub”, because it looked like we were scrubbing the strings. Then we made echoes, and played “grandma opening her mail” and “daddy at the computer” and such. I let her take the lead and what followed was pure magic and the feeling of it is going to stay with me forever.
I will try to reproduce it exactly, but it’s hard, I don’t have her talent at story telling.
“Now the clouds are ruuuumbling like a tummy and fall on the sky, and everybody ruuuuns under the table, because there is a humongous stoooorm on the ocean and there is thundeeeeers and lightings and I turn the lights off to see the sky and I go under the table and save everybody” – all of this while playing the strings faster or slower, harder or like in a thriller, just one string at the time to get your nerves to react. And she declaimed magically, with a voice that followed the music- bass here, baritone there, soprano where needed -, and improvising on that guitar in the same time, like a true minstrel. The best moment was when she used her sweet fingers to imitate the rain drops on the strings – , with her cheeks on fire from so much passion, bathed in pure golden light like an angel, and I was in awe and wishing to be a child again. To see everything just the way it is, a big rumbling tummy falling in the sky and asking for a hero to save the world from some little soft rain drops.
