My Painting House

When I was hoping to have children, one thing I looked forward to was imaginary friends. I can't remember ever having an imaginary friend of my own, but I thought it would be fun to observe my children having them. Sadly, Baby A and Baby B have shown no sign of having any make-believe buddies. However, they do have imaginary houses. These houses are known as painting houses.

When Baby B first started talking about his painting house, I thought he meant a house he had painted. And actually I think in the beginning maybe he did. Maybe he'd drawn a picture of a house at daycare, or on his Doodler (sort of like an etch-a-sketch) at home. I think it's significant that he started talking about this imaginary house around the time we were moving from one house to another. Baby A listened jealously and then declared that he too had a painting house. It's been a couple of months now, and the tales of the painting houses continue.

The painting houses are like our house, only better. "I have a toddler bed at my painting house," Baby B will tell me. "But it's blue."

"I have a GREEN toddler bed at my painting house," Baby A will say, not to be left out.

The painting houses also contain all the videos that the boos would like to own. "I have a video about Dora at my painting house," Baby B told me the other day.

"Oh, do you?" I said. I try not to argue with them about their painting houses, or ask too many questions, but it's hard. Once when Baby B was talking about sleeping over at his painting house, I asked whether he would sleep there all alone.

"No," he said calmly. "With my grandmother."

This seemed very sweet and sad, since boos do not have any grandmothers.

"I stay with my grandmother too," said Baby A.

"There's one for each of you," I agreed. One ghost grandmother apiece.

Sometimes I say I have a painting house too, but the boos think that's pretty ridiculous. It sounds nice to have a painting house, with everything you ever wanted inside. "At my painting house I have a cook and a housekeeper and eleven desert tortoises," I say.

"Huh," says Baby A, unimpressed.

Sometimes boos seem to get mixed up and think the painting houses are real. This week they were asking me to take them to their painting houses. "I don't know where they are," I said.

"Yes, you do," said Baby B, annoyed. Apparently I am in charge of everything, including their imaginations. Later, he mentioned that he lives at his painting house with his mom and dad.

"Oh," I said, "you mean your other mom and dad?"

"No," he said, as if I were an imbecile. "I only have ONE mom and dad."

"But I don't live at your painting house," I said. "I live here, at my house. It must be some other mom and dad at your painting house."

A look of terror and confusion crossed his face. Immediately I wished I hadn't introduced reality into the discussion. I'm being a bad mom, one who doesn't support her children's fantasy worlds. "Don't worry about it," I said. "I'm wherever you want me to be."

The conversation moved on to other topics, such as who got to hold whatever toy both of them wanted to hold at the exact same moment.

The next day we were making muffins. "I have a video about muffins at my painting house," said Baby B.

"That's nice," I said, and meant it.