Letters to Jenny Read Free

Jenny’s “showing off”! She was one happy and responsive little pumpkin today, and I firmly believe that your letter had a great deal to do with it. I certainly hope and pray that her progress continues in this vein, and I’ve left a request for the nurses to read your letter to her periodically, and to question her on her preferences whenever they think it would benefit her mood or willingness to work on coming up out of the fog.
    You told Jennifer a few things about yourself, so I’d like to tell you a few things about Jenny. Though academically a bit on the stubborn side, she is extremely talented in the area of art. She is rather accomplished for a child of twelve, and her drawings are alive with movement and wordless poetry of the kind rarely found in what passes nowadays for art. She attended a school for gifted and talented children, and while her math grades left quite a bit to be desired, her reading and her art classes were A + work. My daughter’s art teacher told me candidly that Jenny was by far one of the most creative art students she’d ever had the occasion to teach, and strongly recommended that should she express the desire to do so, we allow her to attend art classes in addition to the ones at school.
    Jenny’s art reflected her strong love of fantasy and nature (which from my point of view are by no means mutually exclusive), her main subjects being princesses and unicorns. Now I’ve heard all the psychological arguments surrounding girl-children and their equine interests, but be that as it may, Jennifer’s art bespoke of a love of magic and sweetness and nature that belies any psychobabble. Just as you paint a picture with words, Jennifer authored entire stories with one drawing.
    As for Jennifer’s physical characteristics, she’s slightly chubby (as her mother I tend to think of it as “cherubic” rather than “Chubby”!), with a turned up nose, a few freckles spattered across her cheeks, and chestnut brown hair that streaks almost butter blond with the coming of the summer sun. Her hands are deft, her fingers long and slender; strong enough to pull a recalcitrant weed from her rose garden, gentle enough to quiet a trembling rabbit ousted from his hutch while his straw is changed. Her brown eyes, though quite myopic without her spectacles, are quick enough to pick up a change in the gait of one of our eleven cats (”Mother, I think Smokey’s got his old kidney problem again—see, he’s walking with a bit more waddle than usual …”).
    She has a magnificent ear for music, and, when she believes herself to be alone, sings her little heart out, sometimes one of the medieval ballads we all know, occasionally something she’s heard on the radio, but more often than not, she makes up her melody and lyrics as she goes along, singing to her rabbit, her roses, one of the cats, a stray dog, or just to herself as she does her chores or draws a picture. Her songs, though simple, are strangely beautiful, being comprised of what she’s feeling at the moment, or things she sees that strike her fancy. She’s exceedingly bashful about her singing, though, and while we’ve countless times tried to coax her into singing with us during a musical session, she’s always been more comfortable beating the drum or filling in on the keyboard than giving voice to the music within her while in the presence of any but herself, her flowers, or the animals.
    If there is any such thing as magic in this world, I believe that it would be found in Jenny’s singing and her artwork. When she sings, sketches, works in the garden, or keeps company with the animals, she’s transported to a world of her own making, one in which magic is the essence of life, people are good, elves inhabit the nooks and crannies (you need only look a bit further than the end of your nose to find them), all animals are friendly, and monsters just need to be shown a little kindness and love to enable them to comport themselves with