Couldn’t Vivienne have chosen one of the beautiful, whimsical, melodic scenes from My Fair Lady as her favorite? Instead, she has chosen the bath scene with all of its blood-curdling shriek and protest. And we’ve watched it over and over and over again.

“Why did she find this two-minute ordeal so fascinating?” you ask. My first guess is that I have no idea.

My second guess is that Vivienne has always had a keen eye for… what we may call… the conflict of a story. The girl just loves the drama of it all. She’s never been afraid of the bad guy, the skinned knee, or the twist in the plot. Rather, she stares, replays, and studies it. She seems to have been born with an understanding of God vs. Satan, Gretel vs. the witch, and Eliza vs. Mrs. Pearce. This understanding seems to have come with an unshakable peace that the good will triumph (regardless of what depressing modernists claim). As the daughter of an idealist, she is a healthy addition to our family and has taught me (the aforementioned idealist) quite a lot about how to look at life face-on instead of from a delusional slant.

My third guess is that she likes this bath scene because, if she were allowed, this is precisely how she would like to behave when I draw a bath for her. Every time I indulge Vivienne’s request to play “the bath scene”, she seems to absorb Eliza’s drama as if it were a delicious dessert. “If only…” seems written across her wishful face. (Lia seems to have acquired a similar resistance to bath time. We will deliberately pray for a bath-lover when our third child is in the making.)

Ah, you don’t recall the bath scene from the musical? Refresh your memory by skipping ahead to minute 8 of this clip. And replay it as many times as you’d like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grFrKqCVP4g