“Are you a real fairy?”
I pause before answering Nora’s question. Wouldn’t it be spectacular to have a shimmery-winged fairy aunt? Nora and I feed her expanding imagination through our games and stories, yet I stop short of claiming fairyhood. Our fairy connection is nonetheless very real.
When Nora is ready to talk fairies, she snuggles away in her closet and calls me on FaceTime. We ask one another questions and she “reads” facts from the fat volume she has dubbed her fairy book: they hide under mushrooms and in trees; they eat dirt and drink strawberry tea; they don’t like big people. She tells me that fairies appear in our dreams and leap from flowers into our noses.
Nora is learning to weave stories about the wonder she perceives in the world. And when I visit Iowa, we build upon her fairy passion. In June, when we discovered a fairy garden in Grandma’s yard, she proclaimed, “Where there’s trees, there’s fairies!” She and her cousin Sylvie swiped cans of sparkling water and built a fairy river in the yard, and we had an epic fairy tea party on the porch one afternoon.
Being a faraway family member, I don’t get enough face-to-face time with my niece. Thankfully, fairies give us a way to relate to one another in Nora’s language and on her terms. They are part of our evolving, shared story.