Since the death of my father, my fae has been searching, in vain, for a blue house. It has taken some extensive and gentle probing to ascertain the particulars of this house. It turns out this house is very big, and situated ‘over there’ (this statement is made with a vague hand gesture in a random direction). In it are her brother and sister (she’s an only child), both sets of grandparents (one grandfather is now deceased), her child minder, her friends, her unicorn, a baby shark and the entire Paw Patrol.
Safe to say, this house doesn’t exist. Or, at least, not in the form she describes. I have heard that children can have imaginary friends, but, of course, my child has to over achieve, and have a whole imaginary mansion complete with inhabitants and staff. This would not be such a problem, if she did not insist on looking for the bloody thing. She has, on more than one occasion, dragged my husband or myself off around the neighbourhood to look for this house. She has even then announced that one or other of the neighbours’ houses is her ‘blue house’. Trying to explain to people why this small creature is trying to demand entry to their abode is going to be problematic one of these days.
I believe that this has been her way of dealing with the grief of losing a relative, and is her way of processing it on top of being away from school for the six weeks of summer, and not having her friends or normal routine around.
In an effort to nip this in the bud, we have purchased for her a blue doll’s house. Our hope is that we can populate it with effigies of all the things she believes should be there, and this will be an acceptable stand-in for the “real” blue house she keeps looking for.
I will let you know.
Raising the Modern Fae 