Amelioration

Sometimes Rachel likes to make her life easier. This doesn’t mean that she makes life easier for everyone else around. It simply means that she does things to make her own life easier.

For example, in the joy and confusion that having the Palmers live close by has brought into her young life, Rachel has had to make up a few nicknames. Her sister, Miriam, has it easy. She just gets called “my Meme.” Again, Rachel says this to rhyme with “theme.”

The other Miriam, though? She calls her “Bidmeam.” As in Big Meme.

I had to ask her who she was talking about the first time she said it because “Bidmeam” sounds nothing like Miriam. It does, however, sound quite a bit like “Big Mean,” which isn’t the best nickname for a good friend. Even Miriam was confused about it and mentioned to Bridget that, and I quote, “Rachel doesn’t call me Miriam. She calls me something like Bigmean?”

Sorry about that. I tried to talk her out of it. It isn’t like she uses it to solely to differentiate in conversation, either. Oh, no. She calls Miriam that to her face, all the time.

We just had dinner with the Palmers last night, in fact. As luck would have it, Josie and I were over whatever stomach bug had caused us such agony on Wednesday—when we spent the entire day puking and lying on couches while Rachel ransacked the house, Miriam learned to move from tummy to sitting position and popped out another tooth, and Andrew spent all day on campus—and were ready to keep polite company again so the Palmers graciously invited us over. We didn’t get home until nearly 10:00 PM so we rushed through the bedtime routine, telling Rachel that we were skipping scripture study in favour of bedtime.

She wanted to keep us on track, though, and begged to read scriptures. She’s a good girl. We told her that we’d recite an Article of Faith.

That’s kind of our multi-purpose-super-speed-scripture-study plan. We had already used the first article of faith while at Ain Sokhna so we decided to recite the second.

After we had finished Rachel wailed, “Please! Can we just say another acripo of fate?”

Wanting to delay bedtime any?

After laughing about the “acripo of fate” that she asked for we went ahead and lengthened our scripture study by reciting the third article of faith as well because we’re accommodating like that.

Tonight’s bedtime conversation was even better. She asked me to sing “that song about when Jesus died and then lived again,” so I did. That brought on a whole onslaught of questions, most of them beginning with “why.” We discussed the atonement and resurrection and then she said, “Okay, but I don’t really want to be nailed to a cross.”

“That’s okay,” I told her, “Because you really don’t have to be.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s not really a normal thing to happen to people. Only Jesus had to do it.”

“Why?”

“It was part of the plan. He had to sacrifice his life for us so that he could overcome death through resurrection so that we could, too.”

“But, like, I don’t really think I’ll like nails in my hands.”

“Right. That sounds pretty ouchie, doesn’t it? Luckily, you don’t have to have that happen to you.”

“But you will, right? Because you’re big. And when I’m big, I will, too.”

“No. Only Jesus did that. We don’t have to.”

“Why?”

“Because we don’t.  He did it for us.”

“So, why did the bad guys put him in a tomb?”

“They didn’t. The good guys did.”

I don’t really like naming people “good guys” and “bad guys” but she kind of insists on it, kind of like Bigmeme.

“Oh, why?”

“Because they had to bury him because he was dead.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s what we do with dead bodies.”

“Why?”

“Because we want to keep the bodies in a special place but not have them stink.”

“Oh. Why do they need a special place? Why do they stink?”

“They need a special place mostly because people who are still alive want a special place where they can go to remember the person who died. Dead bodies stink because they decay. They rot, like when food goes bad in the fridge.”

“Why?”

“Because.”

“Oh. Will you bury me with sand?”

“What?”

“I like sand. I want to be buried in sand. But not my head, okay? I don’t really want my head to be under.”

“I’m not going to bury you.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re not dead. And I really, really don’t want to bury you. You can bury me, okay?”

“Okay. But when I’m dead…will you bury me then? But leave my head out so I can still breathe.”

“Alright. Yeah. Sounds good. Look, I’m going to say good night now and leave before you get more confused, okay? I’ll send Daddy in to say good night, too. I love you.”

Man, being two is hard. And confusing. For everybody involved.