AUTHOR: Sheri Lynch TITLE: and The Missing... DATE: 8/22/2004 05:13:00 PM ----- BODY:

Olivia has entered the dinosaur phase, a widespread preschool condition marked by a feverish enthusiasm for horrifically monstrous giant reptiles. She happily totes around a plastic bucket full of snarling tyrannosaurs, razor-horned triceratops, and shifty-eyed velociraptors. Give her half a minute and she'll launch into a description of the standard dinosaur diet: plants, grasses, meat, raisins, nuts, and sea bats - an Olivia invention, one she swears is absolutely delicious. Her very favorite dinosaur is the diplodocus, a long-necked plant eater. (Note: back in the day, we called all such beasts by one name: brontosaurus. Make that mistake now and be revealed as a doddering old primitive. Today's savvy dinosaurphile knows the difference between a brachiosaurus, a diplodocus, and an apatosaurus -- not to mention the seismosaurus and the giganotosaurus. It's a lot more complicated to be a young child than it used to be.) Dinosaurs lurk in every corner of our home now, from the bathtub to the laundry room. Just yesterday, Caramia tottered past me on her way to the kitchen, a deinonichous clamped firmly in her jaws. This mania for dinosaurs has led to the creation of Mary, Harry, and Larry -- three little green dinosaurs who live with their mommy and daddy in a cottage in the middle of the jungle. They are the stars of an ongoing saga, made up by us according to the terms set by Olivia. At first we were able to dictate what sort of adventures Mary, Harry, and Larry would have -- adventures that nearly always managed to include important life lessons on sharing or manners or the perils of nose picking. Lately, however, Olivia has become obsessed with the solving of mysteries. All of her three little dinosaur story requests now revolve around locating a missing object or place. Recent titles: The Three Little Dinosaurs and the Missing Cantaloupe The Three Little Dinosaurs and the Missing Pink Beach The Three Little Dinosaurs and the Missing Mirror The Three Little Dinosaurs and the Missing Brown Fan The Three Little Dinosaurs and the Missing Dog The Three Little Dinosaurs and the Missing Black Phone The Three Little Dinosaurs and the Missing Pizza The Three Little Dinosaurs and the Missing Puzzle Birthday Cake You get the picture. Now, creating fascinating mystery narratives off the top of my head is a skill I do not possess. If I did, I'd be churning them out as fast as I could type and living in bestselling splendor somewhere near the ocean. The challenge is made greater by the fact that brevity is crucial for a Mary, Harry, and Larry story. With a three year-old as my target audience, I'd better have those dinosaurs find whatever's missing pretty quickly -- and with a couple of laughs along the way or I risk being replaced at story time by somebody really big, like Angelina Ballerina. After a month or so of listening to these stories, Olivia got into the act herself with her very own fictional creation: the three little lizards. Where my stories are heavy on surprises, group hugs, and happy endings, hers tend to feature a lot of gobbling up, falling down, and banging heads. No matter what the plot is, the three little lizards go through an awful lot of band-aids. And these are truly epic sagas -- with recurring characters and multiple story lines. Forget interrupting or cutting it short. I've tried, only to be firmly told, "Mommy, it isn't over yet until I say ‘the end'. Remember ‘the end', Mommy?" Back she dives into the story, and if you listen carefully, you'll learn all sorts of interesting things about her day and her thoughts and the things that scare or worry her. Like the shadows cast by her nightlight, the high-pitched yapping of the neighbors aged terrier, the tyrannosaurus skeleton at the museum. Of course, none of these things alarm the three little lizards. They are unfailingly bold and courageous in the face of every difficulty, even vegetables. My best friend's son was a dinosaur nut for a few years, and when he outgrew it, Marsha stored most of his collection in boxes in her attic. Olivia loves to visit there, especially if she's invited to spend the night. Once she's settled in with her pajamas and toothbrush, Marsha takes her to the attic, where the two of them rummage in boxes, unearthing a giant apatosaurus with moveable legs, and all sorts of other spiky, scaly, horned and fanged plastic reptiles. It's strange - I can remember Patrick at age five, tearing around my house, terrorizing the cat with one of his prehistoric meat eaters. Now I see Olivia playing with those same toys, and it's as though no time has passed at all. Yet Patrick just started his second year of college. It's the most peculiar thing: all of those years, yet to me, Marsha and I seem exactly the same, if not slightly improved, with better taste in everything from shoes to wine to men. But to Olivia, we are ancient. "Marsha, " she asked, "When you were my age did you know the dinosaurs?" Trying not to laugh, Marsha replied, "Oh honey, I just missed them." Mesozoic, Triassic, cretaceous, Jurassic, infancy, preschool, adolescence, college. Who can keep it all straight? Certainly not Mommy and The Missing Good Night's Sleep, or Mommy and The Missing Short Term Memory, or even Mommy and The Missing Effort at Journaling and Scrapbooking. Someday I'll probably have my own box full of reptiles in the attic, and it will seem like yesterday that we tripped over them, pushed them aside at dinnertime, and fished them out of our cars, pockets, and beds. Maybe by that time, I'll have even forgotten about Mary, Harry, and Larry and their many mystery adventures. Then I'll have a different story to tell: The Mommy Who Misses When Her Little Girl Loved Dinosaurs.

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