Texas Defined

There is a story from when I was a kid and we were moving to Texas.  I was young, two or three.  I don't remember any of this time of my life, of course, except for random five second snippets here or there (and none of these snippets are part of this story).

 But the way I remember the story (my mom will have to do the fact checking) is I knew that we were moving to Texas, but I sure as heck didn't know what that meant.  So throughout the move I kept asking, "Is this Texas?" 

I don't know if this right after the move or during the move, but we ended up doing a family outing to some caves.  I want to say we were at Natural Bridge Caverns and the tour guide turned out all the lights so we could see just how dark it was for the original spelunkers.  And as we silently sat there in the dark, I chimed in to the tour group, "Is this Texas?"

And now it has become very clear that Charlotte has no bleeping clue what Texas is either.  As we were driving back to Minnesota she kept saying, "Texas" with a smile on her face everytime Emily or I said the word in conversation.  Wouldn't it be nice if she were saying it, fondly recalling the great week she had with her grandma, aunts, uncles, and cousins?  Of course I'm not fool enough to fall for that projection.  I figured she just liked the word.

Well enough time has passed for abstraction to wash away.  Today we were at the Children's Museum and she was looking at books (as mentioned in the post from earlier today--see below). She came up to me with a board book, a smile, said, "Texas," and handed me the book to read to her.  And not just any book.  A counting book about gardening with a picture for each page.  Much like one of her favorite books, 1 2 3 Texas.

So there you have it.  For Charlotte, Texas simply means "a counting board book."  In her defense my original use of the word was "Hey! Who turned out the lights?!?!?!,"

Her understanding will evolve.  And since Texas is a part of me, I hope it will become part of her being too.  And I'm talking about livestock, sunshine, the Spurs, the Alamo, or any of that.  I'm not talking about family and my sense of home.  I love it here in Minnesota and this is where my life is.  All I want is for Charlotte's Texas to feel a lot like this video: hanging out with cousins at my mom's house.  

Here she is with her cousin Hannah, who was nice enough to put some batteries in this toy cell phone for Charlotte to enjoy and organize a bunch of toys for Charlotte to play with.  They had a great time together, as was true for the time Charlotte spent with her other Texas cousins Calvin and Sophia.  That's Texas.

And we were nice enough to leave the cell phone behind so it could enjoy Texas and we could enjoy it not in Minnesota.