The Perfect Medicine

Froggy's new favorite game is playing doctor. She has a little medicine kit and I fill syringes with water so she can give her babies their 'medicine'. Beyond the normal curiosity, I think she's processing her treatments and meds and coming to understand these issues through play. It's also such a huge part of her life, it seems only natural she would mimic reality in this safe world of pretend. Sometimes she is the one healing her baby dolls and sometimes it's a friend healing her.

Froggy and her best bud Beeman were playing doctor the other day and when I peeked in the room I saw Froggy under a blanket and she said, "I'm sick," in a very dramatic, soap opera voice. I watched Beeman give her medicine and shots, take her temperature and put a bandaid on her arm.

I love that at three years old they are practicing empathy, with plastic stethoscopes and Susan Lucci histrionics. This is a dress rehearsal for their lives - these games that one day will play out. Whether they become doctors, or comfort a sick friend in the hospital. They are learning, mastering kindness as children.

Yesterday Froggy came into the kitchen and said her baby was sick. "Oh no," I said, playing along.

"She needs the perfect medicine," Froggy said.

"The perfect medicine? What's that?" I asked.

"It's perfect medicine and it makes her all better."

I filled up a syringe and handed it to her. Froggy left the room to give her baby the perfect medicine that would make her all better. And I had to stay in the kitchen for a moment and swallow the sob rising in my throat.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if I could fill up a syringe, give it to my baby and heal her. The perfect medicine. Someday Froggy, someday.


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