A Mommy Story

“Mommy, did you hear someone say hello?”

Mira walked over to where I was sitting and asked that question. She had been standing by the door, watching for the bus, and just before that I had noticed her head snap up from looking at her feet, as if slightly startled, followed by her looking all around as if she had heard something.

“No. I didn’t hear anything,” I replied.

She looked lost in thought, somewhere between puzzled and frustrated. She took a few steps back to the door, looking out again to make sure no one was out there. “Are you sure you didn’t hear anything?” she asked again.

“Yes, I’m sure. Did you hear someone say hello, Mira?”

She nodded her head, frowning. “I was standing by the door and I heard a voice say ‘Hello’ quietly but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.” Then she added, hesitantly, “Sometimes I hear things that my friends can’t hear, too. They don’t believe me when I tell them I heard it.”

At this point I was curious as to what she’s been hearing. I asked her to tell me what she hears that others don’t hear. She told me she often hears someone saying her name, quietly but clearly, although sometimes she hears other things and can’t always tell what the voice is saying. It’s happened at home and at school, when she’s by herself and with others around her. She was hesitant to tell me the details, and I think she worried that I’d think she was crazy.

I then asked her what the voice who said hello sounded like. Was it a girl’s voice or a boy’s voice? Did the voice sound nice or mean?

“It’s a scratchy voice. I can’t tell if it’s a boy or girl. It’s a little weird, but I don’t think it’s mean. It kinda sounds like Mr. Invisible Man’s voice.” She then tried to imitate the scratchy voice, which sounded totally creepy to me.

Mr. Invisible Man was a make-believe nuisance that we blamed much of her clumsiness on when she was younger. The kid has a natural ability for tripping over nothing, falling down unexpectedly from a standing position, and dropping things even with a strong grip. Never would I have thought that Mr. Invisible Man now had a voice that she recognized, or that he was actually real to her.

Way to start out a morning, right? Especially so close to Halloween!

I could see she was bothered by this (and I was starting to get uncomfortable as well), so whether or not I thought she was actually hearing voices, I wanted to give her some comfort. I suggested that maybe the voice was her great-grandma Polly (Aaron’s grandmother), who passed away almost a year ago. Polly was a woman of strong faith, and equally strong devotion to her family. “Were you thinking about grandma Polly recently?” I asked.

Mira’s eyes brightened a little. “When I woke up, I was thinking about when we played a game with grandma Polly at the restaurant.”

“Maybe that memory brought her closer to you, and she wanted to tell you hi so you knew she was still with you?”

Mira thought about that for a moment, then smiled. “Yeah, even though she’s gone, she’s not really gone ’cause she still lives in our hearts. Maybe my heart called to her and so she came to say hi.”

Oh, my sweet girl.

I think she felt better knowing that I took her seriously and didn’t think she was making it up or crazy. She told me more about how this may have been grandma Polly saying hello, but she’s been hearing voices say her name before grandma Polly had died. At that point, the bus arrived (the one time I wish it wasn’t later than it already was!), and she skipped down the driveway to go to school, completely unfazed at disembodied voices greeting her.

I got both kids onto the bus, came back inside the quiet, empty house, and immediately felt creeped out.

Mira is a little girl with very deep thoughts. She ponders this kind of stuff all the time. Cordy has few questions about death and is scared of it, but Mira often asks about death, the idea of a soul, and remaining close to those we love when we die.

When I told Aaron about the morning’s events, he reminded me that Mira somehow has a strong faith in some kind of god, even though we’re not particularly religious. We’re a mixed-faith family, with Jewish/Christian backgrounds and Unitarian/atheist/agnostic beliefs, and generally want our kids to choose for themselves if they want to have faith or not.

And while she knows and will tell us that monsters and zombies aren’t real, she draws the line at ghosts and believes they are very real. No matter what we tell her, ghosts are real. And Santa Claus – he’s also still real for her.

Does Mira have some kind of a gift to hear ghosts, or is her imagination running away with her in the Halloween spirit? I don’t know. But I believe that she believes she hears them, and so I’ll respect her belief. As long as she doesn’t feel threatened and isn’t frightened, I’ll support her and help her try to make sense of it if she wants my help. Or I’ll let her explain it to me if she’d rather. She’s the one hearing things, so she’s the better judge of what she’s experiencing.

This happened last week, and she hasn’t mentioned it to me again since then. But since then I’ve become more aware of when I hear her talking to herself – short, one-sided interactions of a few words here and there. I wonder if she’ll continue to hear the voices or if she’ll grow out of it?

I’ll admit that this freaked me out a little. Not only that it brings up questions of unseen forces, but also if it’s somehow real, I want to know who is speaking to my child.

Has anyone else had a child that admitted they saw or heard things that others couldn’t? How did it affect him/her, and did he/she grow out of it?