Betsy McGee Forester Day

Thinking about Things

Mother didn’t know it but Betsy didn’t always take a nap, and when she did she usually woke long before her mother came to claim her.  She liked to use that time to think about things. One of the things she did before her mother came was to entertain herself by sharing with Bun, her floppy-eared, green calico stuffed rabbit, the story on her nursery walls.  She couldn’t remember a time that the pictures hadn’t been there.  Mama (smells like homemade bread) said they had painted the story together and then would smile at her father and Daddy would smile back in a special way.  And then one of them would tell her the story again. 

Betsy couldn’t imagine how she could have forgotten helping her mother on such a big “project”.  Mama and Daddy loved projects—there was a different one almost every weekend—painting a piece of furniture from a garage sale, planting pansies in the patio, making cookies and miniature pies (Mama called them “baby keeshes”)  for the people in St. Joseph’s Nursing Home when they visited once a month.

Betsy liked the way Daddy told it because he made her laugh with the voices he gave to all the characters.  They were funny but seemed true at the same time.  She liked the way Mama told it because she would often sing songs that went with the story.  The story was The Wind in the Willows.  Mama said it was one of her favorite stories when she was a little girl. 

Mama had shown her pictures of herself when she was a little girl and, though Betsy believed Mama, it was hard to image her tall, beautiful mother was ever as little as that.  Mama said that a father had written the story for his little boy a long time ago.  So Mama had painted the story on the walls for her. 

She knew that the story was supposed to be mainly about Toad and, indeed, she thought he was very funny but secretly, she liked Ratty the most.  Ratty was so nice to Mole, letting him live with him, showing him the ways of the river and the wild wood, and making such wonderful picnic baskets for them even as he worried that it wouldn’t be enough.  Mother had painted the riverbank and the little boat and the picnic on the wall directly at the foot of Betsy’s crib.  When she tried very hard she could dream herself into the picture now and feel the breeze and hear the lapping water, and see Mole nibbling delicately at a little pie.  (Was that a keesh?)  And Ratty, leaning back in his odd clothing (Who wears a suit on a picnic? And why did he have short pants?) and sipping a bottle of lemonade. 

All at once Betsy’s eyes wandered to the door in the hall.  On it was a long hanging Mama called the alphabet menagerie.  Betsy could sing her alphabet and began to hum a little:  “ABCDEFG . . .” to herself.  Mother said it was a menagerie because each letter was worn by an animal.  Mother said each animal’s name and the sound of that name started with the letter that it wore or held.  She had figured out that her own name, Betsy McGee Forester Day began with four of those letters:  B M F D.  She knew that because her mother often shortened her name to BMFD and four of the letters in the alphabet song were BMFD.  Yesterday she had decided that B was for Bear and Betsy.  M was for Mole and McGee.  (The Mole looked a little like Moley in Wind in the Willows but wasn’t as sweet and serious.)  F was for Fox and Forester and D was for Dog and Day.  By the time she had figured that out naptime was over.