Brain Guy, Idnow, and Thinks

When we were in Cusco in January, Gabe and I were in the playground and he said something like, "Mom, there's a voice in my head that only I can hear, you can't hear it, but I can hear it. I can talk to it and you can hear me talking but you can't hear the guy in my brain. It's Brain Guy!"

That started a long conversation with Brain Guy, and he'd tell me what Brain Guy was saying. He told me that I had a Brain Mom to listen to and talk with.

Then he leaned close and whispered, "Brain Guy is really me."

~::~

Several months ago I remembered a Family Circus cartoon where there's an invisible child in the family that does all kinds of mischief, named Ida Know. I made the perhaps-mistake of telling the kids about Ida Know, and now they each have an invisible evil twin - Idnow is a boy Gabe's age, and Not Me is a girl Val's age. They sometimes have long conversations with their evil twins, who are also responsible for mild mischief like tickling me from behind.

~::~

One day last year when we were either just waking up or just going to bed, I forget, but in one of those contemplative moments near sleep Gabe looked at me and help up a finger, saying "I have a think. This is my think about God." He held up another finger: "This is my other think." He held up his fingers in a V, "sometimes my thinks are like this," then held them close together: "and sometimes my thinks are like this. But I'm always thinking about God."