Letter to Dragon: Hand Puppets

“Which one is the easiest one for you to teach Momma?”

“Jackson - the bullfrog.”

“Jackson, not Jeremy - the normal frog?”

“Jackson.” Immediately, Dragon moves both hands and holds them up for me. “This is Jackson.” He then untwisted his hands and slowed down his finger movement as he narrated along for me to follow him.

“First step, put your pinky under these two fingers - your ring finger and your middle finger - both. Both of them.”

“Okay.” I grasped my right pinky and shoved it under the other two fingers - holding it in place with my left hand.

Meanwhile Dragon, you flipped your fingers into the starting position.

“And then you put your pointer under the pinky.”

“Okay.” I grabbed my pointer finger and wedged it under my pinky - holding tight.

“And then you just do this.” Fingers on both of your hands flew into position.

“Ohhhh.”

“Do you see?”

“And you have to straighten everything out?” I tried to straighten my fingers to have them look like yours and just managed to uncurl my wedges.

What I could see was the effortless creation of a Jackson in Dragon’s hands and the car wreck that were your mother’s fingers alongside of your finished hand puppet.

Hand puppets arrived to the house about a month ago. You came home one day from school excited to show what you and T had been doing on the school bus. Here we are, almost a month later and your hand puppets are happening almost every time you are standing still - your fingers are flying along, flipping through different combinations of over under, under over, peeking through, peeking over.

So far we have Jeremy, Jackson, Demented Jackson, Crab, Mad Crab, and Duck as hand puppets - and there seem to be more of them every day.

While waiting for a performance to start, in the car, walking up and down the stairs - your hands are flying along.

Wonderful.