Leona's first imaginary friend

Leona has for a long time now talked to ‘herself’. Basically since she could talk, she’s been doing it. But it has always been to someone she knows, like her mormor, aunties, her cousins or 2^nd cousins, and the two girls from My Neighbor Totoro, always in the applicable language of course.

But now there’s a new little girl in the mix – it is quite exciting, I think. It started last week when we were walking to the store after playing at the school for a while, and I noticed suddenly that she was talking and playing with someone else. Her name is Ey (low tone – not one of the tones in Mandarin, though sometimes the third tone is kind of like that) Loh’ (high tone); Leona was very particular about the tones, and that it is Ey and not Ee or Eh, and Loh’ and not Low. I was fascinated.

And yesterday it all came together. We were reading her Totoro book, and as usual, she took over the telling of the story, where I echo back with the correct pronunciation as well as supplement some things sometimes. She loves, loves, LOVES Totoro. Perhaps because it is the only movie she gets to watch, perhaps because there are two little girls in the story and she can relate, or perhaps because Totoro is just plain old awesome. The movie version we have is in Mandarin, as is the book. Sometimes we do the story in English, but lately I have started to read the book in Mandarin – actually read it and not just tell the story – as a reading-practice for me. It’s perfect, because beside the Chinese characters they have the pronunciation, something that is common for things written for children to read, as it takes a few years to learn the majority of the characters used regularly. Actually, I am not sure how long they do this…maybe all through elementary school? I'll ask Judge later.

Anyways, when we got to the part where they arrived at their new house out in the country-side and the girls’ dad was asking them to help open the back door and then go open the window in the second floor (which in Mandarin is ‘er (descending tone) low (ascending tone)’, and the girls were excited that there was a second floor and had to go find it…find Ey Loh’…and there it was. My sweet little Leona. 

Thinking about it I realized that we have never talked about the first and second floor in our daily lives, but rather upstairs and downstairs, so her logic really was infallible, once again. Why wouldn’t Er Low (or Ey Loh’) be a little girl they should find? 

Oh how I love her!



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