Remembering Dumbo

"You got Dumbo."

It was around 9 AM, Saturday morning. After waking up, I peeked into Christie's room just to see if she was still sleeping. Of course, the moment you do that with kids, they invariably wake up.

I hopped into the bed next to her, mainly to keep her in her room for the next few moments so that Lisa could sleep in a little longer. Christie immediately handed me her Dumbo.

"Where did you get Dumbo?" I asked her, deciding to test her memory.

"Um...", she paused. Her eyes looked up as she searched her developing memory banks. "At a...Diznee store!"

"Okay," I said. Technically she was right. We had gotten her this Dumbo when we were down at Disney World. After meeting CInderella, we had been shuffled out into a giant store area. Imagine that-a Disney attraction that funneled people out into a huge retail area to spend money. Who would have thought?

Christie is a parents' dream in a toy store because she never asks to get anything. All she wants to do is touch or hold the toys, and then she'll put it back. She calls it "squeezing toys." Throughout the whole trip, even in the most obnoxious of Disney retail shops, Christie was content just to touch things. But on this occasion, as she walked by a display of Dumbo stuffed animals, she was drawn to snuggle with one. She picked him up and made him fly though the air, reliving as many of the movie scenes as she could remember.

And this time, she wouldn't put it back.

There was a moment of panic where we tried to figure out how we were going to get her to put it back, because she seemed really attached to this one. But when we realized she really hadn't asked for anything up until now, we quickly decided it was more than worth it to buy it for her. She was so happy holding him, snuggling with him, wondering why Timothy Mouse was not with him. How could we take that away?

But today, hopping on the mattress next to me, Christie didn't quite seem to completely recall all of that. I wanted to try to bring that memory back.

"Which Disney Store did you get it from?" I asked, hoping to get an answer that included the words "Disney," "world," "magic," "kingdom," or "Florida."

"Um....," she thought again. "A new one."

"Oh," I replied. I was disappointed not just because I didn't get the answer I was looking for, but because it seemed way off the mark. At the same time, I was encouraged to see where this would go. Christie's imagination had really kicked into high gear lately. She would make up whole stories with her toys. It seemed like she was making one up on the spot in reaction to my questioning. It was only natural that as this part of her mind grew, some of the memories would be lost.

I decided to keep asking her. Would she make up a cute story about some new place that had just been built in her fertile imagination? Or maybe she was getting confused with our recent trips to the local malls where she would play with the stuffed Dumbos, Mickey Mouses, and Nemos of the Disney Store.

"What kind of new one?" I asked.

"Um....a big one...wike a biiig tent. Wike a circus."

Whoa.

This floored me. Completely.

Because the store we got Dumbo from was the County Bounty shop at a character greeting area in the Magic Kingdom called the Toontown Hall of Fame. And it was themed as if it were a county fairgrounds laid out completely underneath a giant, colorful tent.

She had remembered! She just was trying to figure out a way to express it. She actually had gone where I was hoping she would. She just took another way there.

It's not the first time Christie has amazed me. And I'm sure it won't be the last. And each time, it'll make me proud that she's our daughter.