Fairies, redux

 A couple of years ago, I posted about an exchange I had with Iain, looking down on the river. It was late in the afternoon on a sunny day, and the light reflected in tiny bright twinkling points on the surface of the water. Iain stared down at the water intently, and just as I was about to ask what he'd spotted, he asked me a question: 'Are they fairies?'

Ferries? I thought. Then it dawned on me what he was asking. He was trying to figure out what those little twinkling lights were, and 'fairies' was his best guess.

Now he's 6, and I miss those moments. The world is less magical. He wants to know if Spider-man is real. He draws pictures of tanks and likes watching Scooby-doo. So yesterday, he was sitting on my knee and I told him the story about the fairies. 'How old was I, mummy?' he asked, and 'what did I say?' and 'what did you say?' until he had the whole narrative.

A little while later, Lewis came upstairs, and Iain met him at the top. 'Daddy,' he said, 'when I was little...' and proceeded to relate the whole tale, proudly. 'I said, "Are they fairies?'..."

It was almost as good the second time around.