"Three Minnies"

Melissa and I were driving home from the Lodge at Woodloch.  We had been away from Juliet for four days, the longest time in two years and also forever.  We couldn't stand to be away another minute.  I drove fast.  We got lost.

We drove along winding mountain roads through forgotten mountain towns that looked somehow familiar.  We couldn't make sense of our printed directions, the intermittent street signs or our inability to understand either. 

Then, we passed a landmark.  Not a place we had passed on the way to the Lodge, but a place that I had passed before, I could have sworn.  Costa's Amusement Park.  Mini golf.  Go carts.  A happy place.  I had been there.  I did not know when.  Or how.

Until I saw the sign for Lake Owego Camp, the all boys overnight camp where I had gone when I was ten.  Ten seconds later, we passed Camp Timber Tops, the girls camp that had always seemed five mission impossibles away, but was suprisingly about a hundred yards down the road.  A minute after that, ee sped by Alice's Wonderland, the convenience store where you got to go if you had the cleanest cabin ten times in a row.  Driving past these memories in utterly the wrong direction made me happy.  I asked Melissa why.

"It reminds you of simpler times."

She was half joking.

"It's wild how easy it is to make a kid happy," I said.

"I miss Juliet," Melissa said.  "I think we should turn around."

"She gets happy for one M&M."

"So happy she pees."

"When's the last time you got so happy you peed?"

A single M&M is so exciting to Juliet that she will force herself to pee, on the potty, even if she doesn't have to.  For one M&M, she'll squeeze a drop, and be the happiest munchkin you ever saw when she gets her reward.  She won't ask for another.

The one was enough.

In M&Ms.

It takes three Minnies, apparantly.

The three Minnies were with Juliet when we got home, a present from her Bubby.  We wondered whether they came in a set, and figured probably not.  Juliet invited the three Minnies into her crib, with her two Monkeys, Monkey Pillow, Brown Kitty (who is orange), White Kitty (who is white), Purple Kitty (who is arguably purple), New Monkey, Elmo, Little Elmo, and, well, you get it.  One M&M.  Two Monkeys.  Three Minnies. 

Whatever it takes. 

I want her to be happy.  It makes me happy, happier than camp.  So happy, I could pee.  And that's pretty happy.