Many of you remember when I posted on Facebook some of the conversations I had with Joan when she was younger – when she was between the ages of 2 and 5, to be precise. Then, I stopped, largely because her conversations with me became more grounded in reality, no longer as “cute” as I found them in her earlier years.

Well now, in just a few weeks, Joan will turn 9. And I thought it time to think about those years gone by.

Let’s go back beginning when Joan turned 4, in May 2019:

1. I asked Joan, the day after her birthday, if it felt any different to be four. She said “a little” and I asked her how she felt now. She responded: “I feel I’m almost five.”
2. I asked Joan what the doctor said after her four year checkup. Joan said “she told me I should work on phone numbers.”
3. Four year old Joan has dinner at our house. It was getting late, so we decide to take her up before we clean up. We get up to go, but she turns to me and says “Not you, Cinderella, you have to stay here and clean everything up.”
4. Me: Why did the chicken cross the road? Joan: Because the light turned green.
5. Four year old Joan told me she had a very unhappy friend today, who wanted chewing gum, but didn’t have any. “Why”, I asked, “did she need gum?” Joan looked at me and said: “She didn’t need gum. She wanted gum. Need and want are two different things.”
6. Four year old Joan is singing a song she wrote: “Can you survive? Can you survive? Hiding behind the door without a flashlight. Can you survive?”
7. Four year old Joan is very precise. She told us that her class walked on Friday to a playground and a splash park several blocks away. Her grandmother said to her what she must have walked by a certain store. “No”, said Joan, “we didn’t.” Knowing that was impossible, her grandmother told her she must have walked past it. “No”, insisted Joan, “it was on the other side of the street”.
8. Four year old Joan is confused about baseball. “How can you sit in the stands?”, she asks
9. Her grandmother told four year old Joan that she (her grandmother) had a play date with a friend that afternoon. Joan looked at her and said: “Not a play date; you had a talk date”.
10. Her father often talks to Joan in Spanish. Joan seems to understand but we have never heard her speak Spanish. On the way home today, I asked her if she knew the word for “basement”, assuming that it was a word she wouldn’t have learned. Casually, she says “sotero”.
11. Her preschool is closed this week, so we will take care of Joan. Her grandmother says: “Maybe we’ll do some weeding”. “OK”, says four year old Joan, “I’ll bring my gardening gloves.”
12. “How was Mt Vernon today?”, asked four year old Joan’s mother? “Did you know”, she answered, “that George Washington died in his own bed?”
13. I was trying to teach Joan tic tac toe. The first three games, I was X and she was O and I won all three games. Joan’s response was “I want to be X so I can win”.
14. When we went to Baltimore the other day, I told Joan we were going on the Beltway. Joan told me she knew the Beltway: “It’s the road to IKEA”.
15. At dinner last night, Joan’s father was talking about his job. He works for a government contractor. Edie asked him a question, and he said; “That’s up to the White House”. We didn’t know Joan was listening, but she immediately said: “You mean Trump gets to decide?”
16. Four year old Joan started her final pre-school year this week. One of the teachers is a native Spanish speaker. Because Joan’s father often speaks to her in Spanish, she has developed a pretty good comprehension of some basic Spanish. So her teacher has been talking to her in Spanish and told me Joan understands everything. I asked Joan if her teacher taught her any new words. She gives me a quizzical look and says: “No, I already know all the words”.
17. Four year old Joan asked me if I knew her two children. I asked their names. She responded: McTunafish, and McPictureframe.
18. Four year old Joan, Edie and I walk from the store to our car. We pass a beautiful 2019 Corvette. I say: “Look at my new car”. Joan says “nooooo”, that there is no car seat. We walk on past a massive and complex construction vehicle, with a dirt bucket in front and more attachments than a Swiss army knife. Casually, Joan says, “Look at your new truck.”
19. Four year old Joan says she is going to be a food designer. Her first new food she has named a kabobka. You put a piece of bobka on a stick and hold it while you eat it.
20. Yesterday, I was reading an article about the origin of Jewish last names. I said to Edie: “Do you know where the name Sachs comes from?” Joan answers: “I think they were named after a saxophone.”
21. At the dinner table, we were talking about what adults call their parents. Four year old Joan’s father asked her what she was going to call them after she grew up. Without missing a beat, Joan said: “Poppy and Peepee”.

I think that’s enough for today, right?