I once instructed my daughter when she was five-years-old to "start from the middle and eat side to side, stay off the pink, and spit the seeds on the ground. Baby girl, don't fret over spilt juice; life's just too fleet! Thank the sweet fruit for a cool summer treat". She giggled and slurped even louder before wiping her tiny melon-stained hands on the patch of backyard grass where we shared a secret snack before dinner.

But I couldn't stop there, when she was 8, I convinced her that dinosaurs were so big that they had mailmen in their heads, who had to run up and down a ponderously long, spiky  back and tail to deliver postal letters that gave the dinosaur's feet the instructions to start moving, don't slip stepping over mossy logs, try not to stomp the little mammals into sticky brown goo, and be sure to pause once a day for a restful afternoon
nap.

As she grew older, I warned her about the "bad ole chickens who stole the farmer's truck and scared the farmer's cow. They went into the house and ate up all the food; and they left everybody in a very bad mood". At top of our voices we collaborated on a chorus of  "BAD OLE CHICKENS, WHAT THEY DOING NOW?!"

Just before she matured into beautiful adolescence, I felt moved to tell her about my father who had a voice so BIG it shook the moon making it scamper behind clouds to hide; but my brother and sisters were never afraid of the encroaching dark because the lunar orb miraculously would return just as my father predicted. He said not to worry; and we never did, and we were never hungry, never lonely or cold (unless we played too
long in the freshly fallen white snow and daddy had to rescue us from the frost monsters).

My daughter knows my father only through the stories I tell her. Just as I only know my grandfather through the stories my mother tells me: When she was an elementary student in North Carolina she would peek into the school closets and look under desks, and hunt through classrooms until one day, her teacher asked, "Child, what on earth are you looking for?"

"I'm looking for an education. My daddy said I won't have to work the fields once I found education.”

My daughter is a tall gracious young adult matriculating at a prestigious college and dating young men. So, I advise her that: "Him may be coool . . . icy, butter rippled, fudge swirled, bubblegum flavored; him can ooze down the street, collect into a syrupy puddle, and get lapped up by a stray cat."

She laughs and suggests that maybe dinosaurs didn't have postal offices in their heads and, of course, all men aren't bad.

(Image from Elizabeth O. Dulemba)