I WISH THAT I COULD TELL YOU

Chapter 1 - in which Shawn is played by Thor

Camila looked around at the house. She and Shawn had decided to buy their own place in Miami, close to the house she bought for her parents. It was smaller, but still huge by most standards, with five bedrooms and a pool. Workmen had been in all week converting the large pool house into a studio and gym, and repainting the living areas, which bore the discordant attempts of the previous owners, feature walls of black, purple and orange. Lita's room and the nursery had been painted already, as had the master bedroom, and now painters were working on the living room. She didn't like to spend too much time there, in case the paint fumes were bad for the baby. She looked into the room Lita had chosen. At her request, it had been painted a light sunny yellow and she sat on the wooden floor with her little red case of toys open at her feet. Like a scene from Toy Story, her favourites were all laid out in a tableaux on the floor. Camila watched for a while with a smile on her face.

"OK, you can be Papa," she said, placing her Thor action figure on top of the shoe box she had set up as a stage, his legs apart and his moveable arms bent, the hands on it's hips. She had drawn and cut out a guitar and now stuck it onto Thor at a rakish angle with some tape.

"You are the audience" she said to the gummy bears she had laid out in rows before him.

"YAYAYAY". She said, speaking for the gummies, while she danced Thor across the stage.

"There's nuffin hole in my back!" she sang, imitating her father.

Next she pulled out her Ana from Frozen doll, whose hair had been restyled into a ponytail and she had removed her dress and replaced it with an outfit made from black ribbon that Camila recognised uncomfortably looked a lot like one of her stage costumes.

She also added Elsa, Kristoff, Olaf and Fin from Star Wars. Camila realised quickly that these were her back up dancers.

"What are you doing here on my stage, Mila?" Thor/Shawn said, jumping up and down in Lita's left hand.

"I'm here to sing my songs because I'm a Big Pop Star too!" Camila wasn't too sure about the voice her daughter had assigned her, it sounded awfully bossy.

"Who are these other people?" demanded the guitar wielding God of Thunder.

"These are my dancers!" Bossy Ana/Camila said.

"I don't have dancers, I'm a boy, boy singers don't have dancers, they have guitars! Get them dancers off my stage!"

Camila thought it was probably time to end this travesty and give her daughter a chat about equality between the sexes.

"Shawn, now you listen here," Bossy Camila said, apparently shaking her finger at Thor. "Girl singers are just as good as boy singers, and I can play guitar if I want to, but guess what? You can't dance for sh...."

"LITA!" Camila entered the room with a frown, which was difficult since she was trying hard not to burst into laughter. Obviously their daughter had been listening to the adults again.

"Mama!" Lita jumped up and ran to her, throwing her arms around Camila's legs, then she lifted her head and kissed Camila's growing belly.

"Hola hermanito!"

"We don't know if it's a boy yet, mija, it could be a baby sister!"

"Papa said it had better be a boy because he's already out-numb-bed."

"Did he?" Camila smiled. "I'll have to talk to him about that."

"Are we FaceTiming with him tonight?"

"Of course, every night before he goes on stage, it's the last thing he does, isn't it?"

"Afore he does his vocal exerciserers," Lita nodded, then closed her eyes and put her fingers and thumbs together either side of her head. "And CENTERS himself."