Aanika had been thinking about St. Patrick’s day for a week. She had her clothes picked out – green from shoulder to toe. She had been pondering a letter she was going to write the leprechauns, the treats she was going to leave out. But she also knew that she’d been forgotten for the last few years – so seemed a little leery of getting her hopes up.
But overcoming her fears of disappointment, she left this letter on the kitchen table:
Dear Leprochon please enjoy the treats I put out for you. I hope this St.
Patrics day you’ll do something tricky to my house.
Your friend,
Aanika Akkaraju
p.s. I hope I could meet one of you some day.
The leprechauns must have taken heart. Or maybe they were drawn to the heart-shaped cookies she left them. Either way, they came and had a grand ol’ time at our house. They turned all the kitchen chairs upside down. They tossed all her and her sister’s underwears all over their rooms. And they sprinkled green sprinkles all over the cookies – after taking bites out of each one!
When Aanika and her sisters woke up to the underwears littering their rooms, Maya was curious, but cautious. Anjali didn’t know quite what to think. She hasn’t internalized the St. Patrick’s day tradition. Aanika’s imagination caught afire. She could hardly get herself dressed – images of leprechauns in her room kept halting her every step. When Anjali wondered how they came into the house, it seemed like such an obvious question: “They come in at night!”
She was dying to see what became of her letter, so she ran to the kitchen. You can only imagine her reaction when she saw the small mayhem in the kitchen. She ran from pillar to post, announcing to everyone all the things that went on there last night. Luckily, Srini called at just the right time – he was traveling – and she could pour out her story into a fresh ear.
For lunch, I packed her a cheese and avocado sandwich, normally her favorite thing. Today, though, she went to school worried that the leprechauns might come and eat her green sandwich.
I suppose all of us, no matter at what age, straddle disparate mental states–between energetic and slothful, between feisty and resigned. But isn’t it just beautiful when you see a bit of undiluted, uninterrupted innocence?
