MyThreeDaughters

When I was growing up, my brother and I hardly ever played this one game that my daughters do. We never pretended to be Mary and Laura from “Little House on the Prairie.” We probably would have done that if we wouldn’t have been: outside throwing tennis balls at birds; or finding the dams built in the stream by the kids one neighborhood over and knocking holes in them; or down in the basement, trying to figure out if we could build a fort in the crawl space (Conclusion: Nah, too stinking uncomfortable even for kids).
But the girls play Little House; Fontaine’s always “Mary” because she’s older, and Elizabeth is “Laura,” because she’s in the middle and she has brown hair. And listen, Elizabeth is sweet, but don’t try to tell her she’s not Laura, because she is.
It is difficult sometimes to remember, like today, when I broke into a lecture about hitting, because Ol’ Half Pint has been breaking bad lately and whacking her sister: “Now look, Elizabeth, it is never OK to hit, and I don’t care if she teases you or does whatever, you have to learn to ignore (etc, etc with the adult stuff where you turn into your parents times twenty, etc etc with me trying not to say bad words or scream…blah, blah)…because people in this family don’t behave violently!
Elizabeth, do you understand me?
Elizabeth…?!
DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?”
She blinks the blue eyes up at me:
“I’m Laura,” she says.
Oh my.
WWPD.
What Would Pa Do?