Dino Art collab between my twin sister and her 6 year old son - my half Dutch/ half Portuguese nephew Miko - who I used to call 'kleine vriend' ( 'little friend' ) as he started calling me 'Grote Vriend' ( Big Friend ), back in the days.
More on our friendship in this two year and three days old post Say Hello to My Little Friend
Did you get the movie reference in this title? :<)
This was us, Miko 4 years and 3 months old and I ( age unknown ) on a hike / adventure of about an hour, pretty high - especially for my little friend - above the Portuguese seashore.
I almost lost my cap, that was being blown away by the wind and my sister and brother-in-law got a little worried as Miko and I stayed away for about an hour and didn't call. It was our mindful time together though and I'm looking back on it with a smile on my face.
Yesterday night, I read a bed time story 9 ( or actually 3 or 4 of them ) to Miko, his younger sister Yumi ( now almost as old as Miko was in the above picture ) and my twin sister over a video call.
The stories that I read to them where from the book that inspired me to continue with my children's book in the direction that I was going, and to try and focus on way shorter stories than I eventually had in mind as described here in last month's post. In fact, I plan to write a book containing several short stories telling a bigger story.
To remind you ( or inform you, if you're new to my blog ), it all started out with aiming to write ( the base for ) a novel last November for NaNoWriMo ( National Novel Writing Month ). I made it up to 50k words, but it felt impossible to change it into a book and over time turned into the current children's book(s) that I'm brewing on these days.
And now we're back to where this write up was supposed to center around:
The Drawing at the top.
What you see depicted there is Little Hyper(sensitivosaurus) thinking of his mom.
This illustration was made, today, by my twin sister and nephew, for a story that I wrote for my mom's Birthday 5 days ago.
What follows is the full ( short ) story:
One morning, after waking up, Hypersensitivosaurus felt a strong urge to see his mom.
You're not allowed to visit her. Adult raptors never go back to their family, after they've left the cave.
A voice inside of him, ingrained in his reptile brain, kept repeating the same unfriendly words.
He didn't like that voice, but it was powerful and it usually won.
After a while, he would give in.
Although he tried hard, to picture the situation of being with his mom and enjoying each other's company, negative thoughts made it difficult for him:
Even if they would meet at a secret place, there was a chance that a Pteranodon, the more drone like Pterodactylus, or any other flying or walking rat, would tell on him and then he'd really be in trouble.
Or perhaps - even worse than that - his mom would be in trouble. Being the older - and supposedly wiser - one she should have known better.
And let's be honest, how could he even get in touch with his mom without being noticed?
It's not like phones or any other type of long distance communication existed. Unless you called making a lot of noise long distance communication. A raptor roar, or the sound of a young adult raptor like him calling his mom, would be the worst case scenario ever. It would draw way more than just his mom's attention, if she would pick op on it at all.
So, instead of calling his mom, he decided to just think of her in the nicest way possible.
If I just send her a bunch of positive thoughts throughout the day, he thought, she might actually pick up on that vibe via the mother-son airwaves.
This thought alone made him feel somewhat better and from that day onward he tried to think of his mom in the most positive way that he could imagine, instead of focusing on the unhelpful feeling of missing her.
A Little Bit of Backstory:
The last two years I missed my mom's birthday due to being in Portugal. This time I am actually in The Netherlands but due to 'the thing' that is happening as well as my dad's health situation and my mom having reached retirement age ( sorry mom ) recently, I missed her birthday for the third time in a row. That is, being physically present in the same place.
I believe she had a fun day though, we spoiled her more than usual and I wrote her the above story that I'm sure every single one of you can understand and identify with, being in a somewhat similar situation.
And now back to the cute drawing by my nephew and twister. Now you've read the story, you will understand the picture even better.
I asked my sister if she had time to come up with another illustration after having done a cool dino sketch half a month ago find it here. She seemed to be busy though, so I suggested my nephew might want to do it today. Shortly afterwards she surprised me with this cute, colorful picture.
I need to cut it short here ( he says after a lengthy post ), as I'm planning to play a game of long distance chess with my father in less than half an hour.
You know what, if you're creative enough, life can almost be more fun in these crazy times!
Take care you all and stay ZEN,
A hug from a ( not so hyper ) Vincent