all grow'd up
Last week I just happened to be in the desert. I swung by my brother's house and hung out for a few days.
Somehow I was even more slackadaisical than the way I've been lately in L.A. (if that's even possible.)
My youngest niece, Lei, needed to go shopping for a Prom dress (her first) so I tagged along. I snapped well over a hundred pictures, of course.
It wasn't until looking at the mass of photos today that it hit me: she's grown up. Not ALL grown up, but well on her way.
It stopped me cold. I don't recall much of her growing up years.
I remember when she was a baby. My brother and I were up north in Sacramento on some minor carpentry thing that needed fixing. It actually didn't require me to be there, but we both went just because. His wife called to report on Lei's doctor's appointment that day. They discovered that the soft spot on the top of her skull wasn't soft. In fact there wasn't one and she'd have to be rushed into surgery at the L.A. Children's Hospital to make one by sawing the skull in whatever modern doctor voodoo was required.
It's nights like that one where you don't say much. Hardly anything at all. Because there's nothing to say that would make things better. The drive back seemed longer than usual.
The surgery went well and for months Mom-and-baby were like a single entity: never apart.
For the first time my brother and his wife went out again at night by themselves, I was called upon to babysit. Lei's older sister, all of 8-years-old, was around to help out. Now there's a challenge: a baby, not yet a year old, separated from Mommy for the very first time in her life.
She was okay for a short while until she realized that "Mommy was gone."
She cried and cried and wouldn't stop for nothing. The one word she knew was "Mommy."
She kept crying for her over and over.
On a whim, I carried her close in my arms taking her around the house showing her things and naming them for her; the names of people in photographs including herself. The names of common household items, whatever was there. By the time I made a third pass around the house she stopped crying. I sensed in her eyes a hint of recognition with this "name game", so I kept doing it. And she kept following with her eyes, waking to something larger than herself. Connections.
From then until now, I don't have much recollection of the various things said or done. Memories blur.
But I do remember that night.
She's going to her first Prom in a few weeks and looks so very beautiful in the dress she chose.
I couldn't be more happy-sad than I am right now.
Comments
It hits me---the part about three loops around the house and then some more. I like that this is what you remember of her life so far, and, though she may not "remember", I'm sure everything started from there. The first time someone held her through her crap. cracked open her world. And kept on until she got through. I was just thinking about that today. How the greatest gifts are of wise patiance; and perserverance to someone who wants so badly not to let go. To stand with until they make it through that bit.
Posted by: princess | April 17, 2006 05:02 PM
i just want to know when you will be posting the pictures of the party... they must be posted...
Posted by: angeleener wiener | April 25, 2006 05:48 PM
there's a few on the wall @ Red's place.
you're beautiful by the way.
especially you giving Beefy a super-wedgie. I think he felt it in his Pancreas.
Posted by: brown_slice | April 26, 2006 11:33 AM