I lived in Antigua, Guatemala, for almost six months while we were adopting Olivia, who was born there, and sometimes in the late afternoon she and I would sit on our living room sofa and watch Teletubbies. The show was perfect for us because although it was taped in English and dubbed in Spanish, it’s non-verbal, making it one of the few things we could understand together.

There’s a section in the show where the tummy of one of the Tubbies–I forget which one — turns into a rectangular TV set, and leads the viewer into a scene far away. One afternoon the distant action took place in a schoolroom in England, where cheerful children sat at small tables doing arts-and-crafts projects with an abundant assortment of supplies: scissors, construction paper, buttons, glue, and glitter. What I remember most is how much glitter was left to fall to the floor, small mountains almost, until the floor itself disappeared, and was turned into sparkles. (more…)

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