gabriel's song

We've got nursery rhyme fever over here. Again. Beatrice has all four of us reading, all the time, from The Real Mother Goose and the book I mentioned a little while ago, Over the Hills and Far Away, and probably more than either, a perennial family favorite called Ride a Purple Pelican. And when we aren't reading and reciting, Beatrice freestyles her own nonsense nursery rhymes. Or her brother makes them up for her. Like on our walk to school this morning:

John John
Pteranodon
Painted his nails at the beauty salon
Eating a lot of squishy bon bons
John John
Pteranodon.

Also, a collaborative effort:

Tick tock tick tock
Goes the clock
Put a banana
in your sock.

That cracks them up every time. A banana in your sock?? Wild!

Gabriel has composed his own melody for one of the little poems from Ride a Purple Pelican. Beatrice can recite the words with him (in fact, we all can):

Late one night in Kalamazoo
The baboons had a barbecue
The kudus flew a green balloon
The poodles yodeled to the moon.

A monkey strummed a blue guitar
A donkey caught a falling star
A camel danced with a kangaroo,
late one night in Kalamazoo.

So on our walk, he was belting out this song, including noises for a guitar, and some doo doo doos at the end of each verse. He was dancing around the stroller, playing an air guitar. Really, really getting into it.

Mama, he explained. I'm playing an electric guitar when I sing this song.
And some girls in pink bras and underwear are behind me on stage singing the doo doo doo part. (Wow.)
I'm wearing a silver cape and I'm all sweaty. (Gabriel as James Brown? Elvis?)
And this is a dance I'm doing. (Swiveling hips, shaking his long hair around).

I am completely captivated and help him imagine his show-stopping Vegas-ready rock number. He continues:

And everyone in the audience is clapping their hands like this (over their heads in time to the beat) and holding up signs, and all the girls want to marry me, and they play my song on the radio all the time, and I get really rich. And then I can buy The Mansion*!! Won't that be awesome?

Oh yes, Gabriel. When you collaborate with Jack Prelutsky and record nursery rhyme-based raging rock songs that go platinum, that will be so awesome. And then, as now, I will be delighted by your spectacular you-ness, and all the ways you shine your light.



*The Mansion in question: he plans for all of us, along with his and Frances's and Beatrice's spouses and children, to live together in a mansion when they are all grown up. There will be a bowling alley and movie theatre and basketball courts and, it turns out, a stage for his shows - intimate affairs for family and friends. Because obviously, even in The Mansion, all his fans would never fit.