Like Mother, Like Daughter

Sibley's wispy hair is already escaping her ponytail, straying away from the commanding soccer-mom vibe that marshalls her dolls. Her countenance never changes, authority glittering in her grey eyes to dispel any notion that a crumpled dress means she is slumping into a frowsy mother at the end of her rope. She frowns at Baby Ann, the cloth doll who is slowly sliding to the floor and watches her faceplant. At best, Henson the bear is only a mediocre support; this is the third time Baby Ann has disgraced herself.

Sibley crosses her arms, a sharp voice reprimanding the slouching doll. Loose hairs drift away from her face like a golden cloud when she huffs, exasperated by her charge. "Baby Ann. What have I told you about company manners? Since you can't behave, you only get peas for dinner."

She sets the chocolate cake on the table and cuts pieces for Henson the bear and the two of us. I hold a dull plastic fork in one hand, balancing the equally tiny saucer on my knee. "Sibs, I thought Baby Ann doesn't like peas?"

"But she was bad," she says, unconcerned as Baby Ann sits behind a mountainous bowl of the offending vegetable. "And, I already told her punishment out loud. If I change it, she won't ever listen."

Pretty sensible from a five-year-old, unfair as it might be to burden Baby Ann with enough peas to feed an entire squadron of stuffed toys.

"Maybe I still need to learn about being a grown up," I say. "How about we trade places tomorrow? You be the mom, and I'll be the kid."

Sibley's face lights up, probably hoping to eat real chocolate cake for dinner. I can already see her mind calculating how to make the most of this.

I come downstairs in the morning to find Sibley hasn't forgotten. "Remember, I'm the mommy," she says. I ask her what's for breakfast. This seems to perplex her momentarily, as if she didn't realize scrambled eggs and toast was a choice I made. She makes an instantaneous decision. "Toast."

We each get several pieces, her uneven buttering creating a desert of dry crumbs out of every second mouthful and sticking in my throat when I try to swallow. We walk away with grains of toast still scattered like sand over the table.

To show she's cut out for this, Sibley marches into the bathroom with a toy makeup pouch in hand, her liberal powdering making me glad it's all pretend. The only actual addition is a coat of sparkly lip gloss in her favourite colour - blue. I watch as she compliments the glitter with three looping necklaces of metallic emerald beads.

It's Saturday, so we can't "go to work", but we can pretend. We turn the kitchen into my "office" and pull out the crayon drawer where colours hide beneath a myriad of greys and browns. Labels long peeled away, we sift through piles of dark purple and dark blue crayons trying to find the black. As we draw, grains of breakfast crumbs speckle our important papers - cards for grandma - appearing undesirably like flies pressed flecked against the window screen. Sibley presses a green crayon into the page, trying to colour harder than the defects, and dents both the wax and the paper.

"Mummy, you didn't get rid of the crumbs," she says, eyebrows furrowing.

"That's your job today," I say, and hand her a cloth to wipe up the toast crumbs. She leaves the dishcloth in a damp heap on the table once our spots are clear, our pages sticking to the surface when we don't give the table enough time to dry.

After a lunching on cheese-strings and crackers, we go to the park. Hand in hand we chase through the orange leaves swirling and crinkling underfoot.

"Sit on the swing, I'll push" Sibley commands. She stations herself behind me and I help propel myself with my foot, but her attention quickly diverts to a yellow bucket lying on its side.

She wanders over to it and I pretend to protest, "Hey, where are you going?"

"I'm going to build a sandcastle," she says, "but you can help. It's not nice to only do one thing."

I cater to her insight by getting off the swing and following her to the toys, where we play until she tires of it. For once I don't worry about what time I want to get home or think about everything I need to do in the evening. It's surprisingly relaxing to have my life directed by a five-year-old. Sand is trapped everywhere in Sibley's clothes, and she's probably going to bring half the park back home, but I push the worry away for later. I join her, sprawling spread-eagle in the sand pit, as we look at the clouds drifting overhead.

For dinner, I tell her that we need to eat something healthy, and Sibley ransacks the pantry. I'm pretty sure that she can't go wrong between cans of vegetables, soups, baked beans, and even ham. I'll cook it, but she's in charge of meal planning for the night. Eventually she surfaces, a jubilant smile stretching from ear to ear. Cans are stacked all over the floor like an obstacle course of colourful building blocks. In her hands are a box of dried spaghetti and a can of cranberry sauce.

"We're having Thanksgiving spaghetti," she announces, shaking the noodles like they're a maraca. "It's just like spaghetti, but with cranberries instead of spaghetti sauce."

I forgot how much Sibley loves big holiday dinners, heaping an extra spoonful of cranberry sauce on her plate. She'll eat it with just about anything - stuffing, mashed potatoes, the turkey - and this seems to be proof of the fact. Points for creativity.

"How long will it take?" She asks me, hands on hips.

"Maybe 15 minutes," I say, given the simplicity of the menu. Sibley announces her intention to make a "varnish" (I assume she means a garnish, which proves I've been watching too many cooking shows lately).

Apron on, she needs both hands to control the tongs to transfer slippery noodles to our bowls; even then, they tremble. By the end, the mountains of pasta might even rival Baby Ann's peas. Half a can of cranberry sauce is spooned over each then adorned with cookie-cutter-shaped bread cut-outs - a shark for me, and a t-rex for Sibley.

The first bite isn't bad, except for the texture of now-cold noodles in equally cold sauce. The cranberries coat the bread like jam but refuses to adhere to the noodles, slipping off whenever we try to scoop a forkful. We're eating pasty mouthfuls of plain pasta interspersed with overwhelmingly sweet spoonfuls of canned cranberry sauce.

"How is it, Sibs?" I ask her. After the first few excited bites, she's starting to push the meal around on her plate, trailing the noodles like water snakes through a lake of cranberry sauce.

"It doesn't taste like Thanksgiving at all," she says, mouth trembling.

"Do you want some help?"

"But you can't, I'm supposed to be the mom," her eyes start to glisten.

"But you help Mummy cook all the time too, right?" I ask, trying to stay her tears. That isn't what I'm trying to show her. She nods slowly, wiping her nose on her sleeve. "How about Thanksgiving stir-fry?"

Her eyes perk up and I ask her to grab a can of broccoli and a can of ham from the pantry. She slides off her chair and I listen to her stockinged feet run across the wooden floor while I start separating the remaining noodles from the sauce. Was stir-fry a culinary masterpiece? Of course not - but it was better than cold noodles heaped with cold sauce, especially following an afternoon in even colder weather. We agree it tastes like thanksgiving fried noodles and is a pretty fun idea. In moderation, no longer a main ingredient, the cranberry sauce gives the dish its identity and holiday flavour. Dessert comes in the form of chocolate ice cream in lieu of cake.

"What did you think about today?" I ask, tucking Sibley into bed. She's wearing her favourite sheep pajamas and has Henson the bear and Baby Ann on either side of her.

"It's a lot of work being grown up," she says, "I'm a better pretend-cook than real-cook."

I kiss her forehead, and smooth back some of those golden wisps. "I had a lot of fun despite that. And I love how creative you were with everything."

She smiles. "I want to be a fun grown-up, not boring. Even if everyone else is."

I remember the light in her eyes as she dolled herself up in jewelry and lip gloss, the eagerness in her voice to play in the sand and find shapes in the clouds, and her joy in creating a brand-new dish. "Sibley, you couldn't be boring if you tried."

I change up breakfast by cooking Sibley's egg in a t-rex shaped hole in her toast, spreading the leftover cut-out with more cranberry sauce. I ask Sibley if she would like to help Mummy get ready in the morning and pick out my earrings. She eagerly sorts through the glittering box of dangling earrings I haven't worn in years. Their heavy weight brushes my neck when I turn my head, reminding me to be confident.

And Sibley? The next time Baby Ann falls down at tea, she isn't punished by having to eat only peas. It's true she doesn't get a second helping of dessert, but this time Sibley jubilantly asks Baby Ann to clean the table when they're done; I think she appreciates the variety most of all.