A skunk-cabbage by any other name

My mom-in-law is an unfailingly courteous southern woman. She enthuses over every gift she recives, spending five minutes describing how wonderful it is. Every meal someone cooks for her is praised as though it were her mother’s own recipe. She is always an example of graciousness. I, on the other hand, get a migraine merely thinking the words “thank you notes.” Mom-in-law is the sit-sweetly-in-the-garden-and-read grandma. She loves nothing more than to buy the girls matching dresses. Sometimes handmade. With hats. My mom-in-law is two inches taller than I am, and sometimes I still feel large, clumsy and boorish next to her.

And so it is part of her charm that among her many fine qualities is a quirk or two. In particular, she has a fondness for unusual toys. She is the only adult I know who actually laughs - real, drawn-out giggles - over those animatronic dolls that move to music. You know, like the mounted fish that moves its tail and sings to a Tom Jones song. She has several of these things, and still thinks they are funny after having them for years.

We spent the last week with my in-laws, and among the many, many gifts they gave our girls was an unusual stuffed animal (not animatronic, thank goodness) that she found at Cracker Barrel. JellyBean spent most of the week hugging it, dragging it by the tail, or wrapping it in a blanket and pretending it was baby Jesus.

JellyBean likes to names her toys according to a strict ritual. During idle moments, the husband and I will ask her, “Is its name Robin? Is its name Sammy?” After each name she will smile primly and say, “Nooooooo.” When we finally hit the name she approves, she repeats it with joy and that is the toy’s name ever afterwards. That is how her dolls became Sarah, Hannah and Hildegard. Sometimes we start to run out of names. The longer the naming ritual takes, the weirder the names get. Naming her new toy from grandma took three days. But when we said the name she wanted, her face lit up with a seraphic smile, and she proclaimed, “Kwee-duss! Kwee-duss!” And we fell back, awed and amazed at the perfection of her choice.

So allow me to introduce (though without a picture because my OS is too outdated) the newest addition to our family, JellyBean’s special friend, everybody’s favorite North American marsupial:

Cletus the Possum.

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