#dailyplay

A Formica-topped table with a scratched, faded white and grey checked pattern stands in front of a muslin-curtained window. Dull winter-morning light is seeping through. On the table is an antique crystal vase with a carnation and a long-stemmed daisy in it. The room is a kitchen – a white enamel-topped stove, pans hung about the place, sixties tiles on the walls. The cupboards are melamine and some are missing their handles.

A fish tank stands on one end of the kitchen counter with two fat goldfish circling inside.

[A woman enters. Her brown hair tied into a long plait with a silk scarf at the end. She has a gold necklace, a black t-shirt, and high-waisted stonewashed black jeans. In her hand is a large brown paper bag - on her hip, she carries a young child. The child has soft, gold, wispy hair and wears green corduroy dungarees and an array of plastic necklaces.]

Child: What are we having for dinner?

Mother: [sets down the paper bag on the table and lowers the child to the ground] It’s your favourite! Vegetable pie.

Child: [climbing onto one of the chairs] With potato top? 

Mother: Yes, with mashed potato top.

Child: Yum!

Mother: [visibly relieved at the ‘yum’ reaction] Yum!

Child: What is it like being a grown up?

Mother:  [contemplatively] …I don’t know. 

Child: Why?

Mother: Because I just don’t. It’s hard to explain. It’s a bit like being a child but you’ve got to think about lots of things.

Child: I think about lots of things and I’m not a grown up yet.

Mother: When you’re an adult you have to think about different things.

Child: What sort of different things?

Mother: [taking broken and bruised vegetables out of the paper bag and lining them up on the table] Things like dinner things, and tidying things, and work things, and money things.

Child: When I am a grown up will I have to think about those things?

Mother: Yes, but you don’t have to think about them yet. Just mummy has to think about those things.

Child: [grows quiet and begins to examine the flowers in the vase with meticulous attention and detail] Okay.

Mother: Poppet, are you alright? 

Child: Is that why you are sad sometimes?

Mother: Is what why I’m sad sometimes? I’m not sad… 

Child: Sometimes you are sad. Is it because of work things and money things and tidying things and dinner things?

Mother: Sometimes, yes.

Child: Are you scared? 

Mother: Sometimes… yes…

Child: I’m scared too.

Mother: [sits down on the chair next to her daughter and pulls the child onto her lap] You don’t need to be scared right now. There’s nothing scary for you.

Child: I’m scared that I am going to be scared later.

Mother: [softly, rocking] That’s silly. You can worry about all that later.

Child: But I am scared now.

Mother: You don’t have to be scared.

Child: And I’m scared that you are scared.

Mother: [holds her child close and rests her chin on the top of the little girl’s head. She closes her eyes and then squeezes them tight shut, trying not to cry. She rocks the child (and perhaps herself) as the music fades in, and for the duration of the song.]