Mystery Play

For months now, the BB has done something that she clearly enjoys and I find totally mysterious.

She stands on my bed, which is next to her crib, and walks to the corner of the crib, always the same one. Then, she picks up some invisible object from the corner of the crib, walks back to me, and deposits the invisible thing into my hair. If I thank her for it, she will smile happily. Then she does it again. And again.

She'll also do it to her father, and yesterday she took the object and apparently deposited it on the head of someone else, not visible to me, but about two feet to side of me.

She used to announce 'ba-BEE!' when she did this, and I still occasionally hear 'Ba!'. I mention this because my MIL mentioned that children often play with spirits, and wondered if any older woman in the family had been called something like that. And of course, they were. My mother is 'Bubbe' to her, and as my mother points out, many generations before her would so identify themselves if they were asked by a little child.

I'm not superstitious. I swear. I just don't quite know what she's doing. My own notion is that the gesture seems as though she's picking flowers and then decorating us with them, but it may not represent that to her at all. I don't know if she's ever done that in real life. I also don't know why flowers only grow on one corner of her crib.

As my husband points out, by the time she's able to tell us what it means, she probably won't remember.