Is there a Doctor in the house?

It often amazes me how much young children take in when you don't think they are aware of the situation at all. Its been several weeks since my mother was in hospital and one would think it was enough time to forget the things that Sweetpea saw and the people she came into contact with.

Not so. Just this week Sweetpea pulled out one of those tacky cereal box give away gifts that kids will see at the supermarket and nag you senselessly for three isles to have. It was a cheap blue plastic wallet with a Velcro strip to snap it shut. Somewhere out of the murky depths of her toy box Sweetpea unearthed this cheap and nasty give away and revealed to us her future.

Unwrapping the whole length of the wallet, she then went up to The Matriarch, pulled up the sleave of her shirt and then wrapped it around the top of her arm.

“Shhhh. Shhhh. Shhhhh” came the sound from my daughter’s pursed lips.

It dawned on my mother and I that Sweetpea was using the wallet as a blood pressure cuff and she was taking her grandmothers blood pressure, just as she had seen so many times in the hospital.

“Oh you good girl,” said my mother. “Are you going to be a nurse or a doctor?”

“Doc,or” came the certain reply.

My mother and I stared at each other open mouthed. Never had that word passed her lips before, but the resolve in her voice was firm. Of course, I laughed and joked to my mother about if only it were true. But then Sweetpea did something that nailed the coffin shut in my mind.

She took the blood pressure cuff off my mothers arm, opened it up and sternly said, “Money.”

“Oh yeah. You're a doctor alright.” I've been searching for a toy doctors kit ever since.