We usually hear a ton of made up stories involving rockets and space and planets with complicated plots and too many characters to keep track of. Often we lose the train of thought within a few minutes and let it be a background hum.

But a recent string of stories had us smiling and the Bapa saying – you’re going to blog about this, aren’t you?

When he put it like that, how could I disappoint?!

It started when the Bapa shared the news about Chandrayaan 1 having found water on the moon.

Kodi’s first reaction – the moon?! But how? there are no oceans there! How?!

They found it in the rocks.

After a few more questions about how water got in the rocks, the conversation ended.

The next day, we overheard this –

…First, the Amul space shuttle will go to space….because the astronauts there need butter for their bread, how will they eat it otherwise, so the Amul space shuttle will take Amul butter to them..

…then Chandrayaan 1 will go and see if there is water. After that Chandrayaan 2 will test the rocks to see if a Chuck E Cheese can be built. Then Chandrayaan 3 will take animals. After that, two Chandrayaan 4s will go – one will have people, one will have police. The police will make sure no bad boys are on the moon. The people will build Chuck E Cheese, after that everyone can go to the moon and play.

As easy as cake.

Speaking of cake, with this backdrop, it was a given that the birthday cake design had to mirror his moon/space travel fascination. As of this moment, I don’t know what it is going to look like; I don’t know if my rough sketch to the baker was clear enough, if my color schemes were too crass, whether the design would be implemented to what I have in mind, if he was nodding his head to everything I said because he understood and agreed or because he just wanted me to shut up about the details. There was a smirk on his face. He might have been thinking I was giving him a shuttle blue print for a cake design.

But this is another one of those just-let-go moments. The joy is not in the cake or how it turns out (unless of course, it turns out awesome :) ) , it is in the weaving together of the present and future, of reality and fantasy, of practicality (bread needs butter, of course!) and improbability (Chuck E Cheese on moon!), of the adventurous flights and enormous heights a four year old imagination can take.