Hugs and kisses

Let me just say that in the past week Anonybabe has suddenly gone from a person I rued spending most of the next 18 years with to an affectionate little delight. She's been giving spontaneous kisses for a while, but they seemed more of an automatic, a confirmation that she did something right. I mean, when she does something that delights us, both Anonyhub and I tend to pucker up and ask for a kiss, so if she did something she thought we should find delight-worthy she'd turn perfunctorily to us, crane her neck and raise her eyebrows as if to say "Kiss, please? Come on, I haven't got all day!" She would also give "squeezes" when requested, but tended to be more impressed with herself by knowing what they were and how to administer them than with the hugs themselves.

But this past weekend a sweet sweet light went on. First off, she of the furrowed brow and head shakes has finally deigned to use her voice for something other than squealing and babbling. For a while, she's been kind of whispering out consonants when we say words ("buh" for "banana", "puh" for apple, "puh" for pacifier). She would enthusiastically and rapidly make the consonant with her lips, but little to no sound would come out. If she was gibbering something that sounded like a word and we asked her to repeat it, she would suddenly stop and look up at us and give us a look as if we'd caught her doing the Hammer a little too enthusiastically in front of her bedroom mirror (don't ask how I know that look so intimately). She hadn't even really said "mama" and "dada" yet, although she could point to the proper entity 9 times out of 10 when quizzed as to that person's whereabouts.

Until this weekend. I suddenly seemed to go from the woman who's nice to have around because she provides the warm milk and the opportunity to climb stairs to, well, "mama". Anonybabe would chant it while asking for milk with her hand, and instead of being an endless string of "mamamamamam", she would say it with the proper two syllable format. She would give a self-satisfied smile when I would pull out my breast, then lean against my bare chest and look up at me and take a moment to enjoy being close and say "Mama" so sweetly before digging in.

So now, instead of having visions of the wary strangers we will eventually and all too soon become, I have movies playing through my head of Anonybabe as a 7-9 year old, holding hands with me as we laugh and stroll down the street together, sharing some inside joke and reveling in each other's company. Maybe she will like me a little while before teenagerhood comes and bites me in the ass with her impertinence. I almost don't know what to wish for. My folksy wisdom (stop! I see you laughing and snorting your coffee through your nose) such as it is, tells me that Anonybabe will rebel, will go through a necessary period of separation and isolation from her dear Daddy and me. I think it'll suck, but I kind of think it's inevitable and necessary. And then part of me thinks, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we'll get along.

Or maybe no matter what I should tell myself and work hard to believe we will get along because I'm kind of ruining the present by worrying about the future. As in, I don't want to fully give my heart to this adorable little imp because of my certainty that she will stomp it into a greasy smear immediately upon blowing out the candles on her 12th birthday cake, and won't think to apologize until at least her 21st birthday. I almost didn't enter into a relationship with Anonyhub because of the same reticence to share my heart, and I'm glad I eventually did. He was a lot nicer, and my heart was a lot more resilient than I expected.