Nun of the Above

Like Scherezade, I am expected to produce a unique, never-heard-before story more-or-less each time I tell the boys a story - particularly at bedtime, after "lights out". This is more Ian's preoccupation than Daniel's. The request tends to go, "Daddy, can you tell us a story we've never heard before?" Sometimes spiritual accounts are welcome - Bible stories, real-life miracle stories, stories from the lives of the Saints. Sometimes "Nice and Ferocious" stories are preferred - morality tales about the Goofus and Gallant of the truck world, who exhibit opposite tendencies in terms of road safety and driving etiquette, with radically different results for the hero and anti-hero, respectively. But sometimes I'm expected to crank out something entirely different - not within the known genres, per se.

At that point, I get creative. I seem to have exhausted the Grimm/Hans Christian Anderson lineup a very long time ago, as well as every story I can ever remember from grade school. Then I dipped into "real-life" - re-cast into fantasy. One example would be Watergate re-told as the tale of the greedy king. But a few weeks ago, I went straight to Hollywood for material. I decided that we would "tell" the story of The Sound of Music, with a bit of whitewashing about who the Third Reich was and why the von Trapps wouldn't want to work for them, since the lads are a bit young to really contemplate the ravages of National Socialism.

Daniel wanted a story with soldiers - bad soldiers, no less. This was highly fortuitous; few children's stories are quite as accommodating in the "Bad Soldiers" category than the Sound of Music.

But I had to paint a picture of the backdrop to the story. I began by telling them about Maria-as-nun (more likely novice or "postulate"); but to accomplish that, I had to introduce to them the category of "nun" itself, as well as "convent." This is made somewhat easier by the fact that the boys have an uncle who is a monk - the parallelism between monk and nun is extremely straightforward. But still, Daniel was clearly still digesting this concept of "Nun".

Daniel: Daddy, am I a nun?

Me: No.

Daniel: Daddy, when am I gonna be a nun?

Somehow, I don't think Daniel will ever come nearly as close to donning the habit as Maria von Trapp...

(October, 2009)