Night Time Trials of an Abandoned Woman

Okay, this latest experience tops the one I had in the middle of the night during the last rain storm when the door that leads to the outside had blown open and it was actually raining ON me in my BED. I stumbled out of my dank blankets, across the wet floor to reach Nathaniel who was standing up in his bed, intermittently illuminated in the great shocks of lightening, crying "Mommy, I want to sleep in your bed! I want to sleep in your bed!" It was all pretty dramatic, yet has been topped now by just the absurd discomfort and horror endured as I awoke in the wee hours of dawn to a bed full of macaroni and cheese, spilled juice and blood from baby's nocturnal nose bleed.

The Child Catcher

During this first week of my husband's and my separation, Nathaniel and I have now watched Chitty Chitty Bang Bang about 14 times. My three year old now knows it so well that we can play out the menacing Child Catcher scene together. When I'm The Child Catcher, I skip around the house in my best imitation of Robert Helpmann in the movie, brandishing lollipops in my hand.

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"Children!" I croon evilly. "Lollipops and candy! And all free today!"

Nathaniel has interpreted the character of The Child Catcher a little differently. First of all, he calls him Fuzzy Wuzzy. He doesn't find him at all scary. When he plays "Fuzzy Wuzzy," He creeps around the house calling "Children, children," but then when he finds me he simply offers me a lollipop and then merrily says "Goodbye!" before going off somewhere to eat the rest of the candy by himself.

I can't say my take on the character is "better" than his. I mean, we just have different artistic visions, no doubt equally valid. It's like William Makepeace Thackeray developing Becky Sharp as a very flawed - and often unpleasant - character in Vanity Fair, but Focus Films totally changing her into a honest, plucky and charmingly irrepressible heroine for the 2004 movie.