One afternoon, the girl and her friend went out to the barn to play. They were gone for several hours before the mother noticed that it had been quiet for an exceptionally long time. So she went out to investigate.

Even before she reached the barn, she could hear the friend’s voice droning on and on. She followed the sound and discovered the girls nestled down into the passageway between the two barns—outside the new barn and inside the old barn. The friend was reading a chapter book about dragons.

“Is she making you read to her again?” the mother asked the friend.

“It’s okay,” the friend assured her. “It’s a good book.”

And the mother’s heart swelled with gratitude for the sweet friend who never once made the girl feel Less Than simply because she couldn’t read as well.

The end.

This same time, years previous: a July evening

The girl’s mother had been so busy with applesauce and cucumbers and green beans that she had mostly been ignoring the girl. So one summer evening the girl decided to surprise her mother with a tea party.

She got all the wine bottles out of the fridge and lined them up on the table. She filled an old glass bottle with water and stuck a cork in it. She got two wine glasses out of the cupboard. She got the pan of leftover gingerbread and set it on the table, too. And then she showed her mother.

The mother paused for a minute, thinking (and internally sighing, just a bit), and then said, “There’s whipped cream in the fridge,” and she poured herself a glass of wine and sat down.

They ate their cake and sipped their drinks. The mother asked the girl what the best part of her day had been and the girl asked the mother what the best part of her day had been.

They chattered about This and That, and all was most pleasant. But then, as she is wont to do, the girl announced she didn’t want to take her allergy medicine anymore and the mother said she still had to, and of course the girl squawked and moaned most dramatically.

But then she mostly got over it and they cleared their dishes and went out onto the porch to snap the green beans.

The end.

This same time, years previous: classic bran muffins, banana bran muffins, spicy Indian potatoes, blackberry cobbler

The boy had a couple of loose teeth. Maybe even three. He begged his mother to pull them, but it gave his mother The Queasies to even think about tugging out a still fairly-firmly attached tooth.

But the boy was persistent.

So the mother compromised. She said she would hit his tooth out with the telephone.

Oddly enough, the boy thought that was a great idea.

So the mother thwacked the tooth.

The method wasn’t very effective, however. Probably because they were both laughing so hard.

Over the next few days, the tooth grew looser as loose teeth are wont to do, until one morning at breakfast the boy exclaimed that he could lay the tooth down in all directions.

The mother, fed up with all the loose-tooth chatter, grabbed the dish cloth off the counter and said, “Fine, I’ll pull it. Open up.”

The first few tugs were tentative (The Queasies, though suppressed, were present), but finally she gripped the tooth and yanked hard. And out popped the tooth.

There was much cheering and high-fiving and only a bit of blood.

The boy’s mother put the tooth in a mini tart pan and set it on the windowsill. It would go under the boy’s pillow that night.
 
And just like that, the little boy was all grown up.

Amazing.

(Actually, the final picture was taken before the other two, so the order isn’t exactly honest. But the mother declares that the final picture illustrates exactly how she feels about the little boy. So in that regards, everything is truetrue.)

The end.

This same time, years previous: roasted corn with lime and feta