imaginary driving

I haven't been home before my grandson's bedtime this week. A combination of work and church-related events kept me away. Last night, though, I got home around 5. He must have heard the garage door opening because, before I could even pull the car in fully, he had opened the door from the house and was running out to greet me. I turned the car off, preparing to get out. Gabe, though, wanted to play IN the car. So I pulled him in and we proceeded to play: we pretended to drive places, to say "hello" and "goodbye" as we went, to push buttons (he loves turning the hazards on and off, on and off), to put the keys in and take them out, to pretend to shift gears, to climb to the back seat (he did, I didn't) and back again, to put on our seat belts and take them off again. There was so much playing to be done in the car, even though it was turned off and sitting in the garage. We played for nearly a half hour, until one of us (I'm not sure which one)turned on the car alarm. I had trouble figuring out how to turn it off again, so we decided it was time to go IN the house and play cars there. I was reminded, in a week with lots of work and lots of tasks, how necessary it is sometimes to take time for imagination. How relaxing and refreshing it is to play and pretend. A two-year-old can teach us that.