Capturing stars with an umbrella

Yesterday I had to pick up Alice, my 3 year old daughter, from her after-school instead of my wife. Normally I drop the kids off and my wife does the pick-up, but she’s still out sick today.

I brought Alice’s little umbrella along. It’s a small pink frilly thing with picture’s of Disney’s trademark Cinderella on it and even though it’s not raining, she loves having it on the short walk out of the school. On this evening though, there was a wonderful evening sky. It was dark but clear, that wonderful black-blue smooth gradiant. The stars hadn’t come out yet but there was a small brilliant white crescent moon.

As we walked across the school yard, I pointed the moon out to her and said “you can nearly reach out and grab it”.

“Pick me up daddy, I want to catch the moon with my umbrella!” So I lift her up and she reaches out to this lovely sky with her pink umbrella until she declares that she’s got it. I put her down and she spins around and says “… and I let it go!”.

Then two more shakes of her umbrella and she tells me in the most serious tone, “I’m capturing the stars now!”.

“But Alice, there are no stars in the sky yet.”

“Daddy. I’m just pretending.”

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