Reverse Culture Shock

Our two year old daughter is a big fan of a British kids’ show called “In the Night Garden.” It’s made by the same company behind the Teletubbies. Therefore, the characters are colorful, and slightly freakish.

There is blue, smiley Iggle Piggle, often seen with his red blanket, who looks like a light blue version of Gumby.  He enjoys a more than platonic friendship with Upsy Daisy, who has a triangle shaped skirt and colorful hair.  

I thought our daughter might forget the characters, since they haven’t yet cracked the US market (it’s only a matter of time, I’m sure…).  But she remembers, and often asks me to draw them.  Luckily, our babysitter is a better artist than I am.  She is now well schooled in the art of sketching the Night Garden crowd.

It turns our that our two year old is better at keeping up with her old friends than I am. Last year, I gave a close friend’s daughter in London a personalized picture frame painted by a friend (again, who is a better artist than I am).  It had little pictures of the hospital where she was born, the coffee place where we all went when the girls were babies, our favorite playground, and other reminders of the fun things she did in London with her family, and with us.

They moved to New York last June, and we moved to Atlanta in November. The little girl’s third birthday is coming up, and I have no idea what to get her. While I keep email her mom, and occasionally talk on the phone, the conversations are rushed, filled more with big themes (we moved into a new place; my commute is too long; work is stressful; etc) rather than little details of our daughters’ likes and dislikes.

So I think I should take a cue from my daughter, who commissions sketches of characters she hasn’t seen in months.  She doesn’t need to see them every day to remember them.