Affection

The spring peepers started singing today. It was warm and windy and Fang Fang fell asleep while we sat together on our backyard swing, watching the sky go dark and feeling the warm spring breeze against our bare feet. She had a big day - I resumed
my lunch mom duties and she came with me, and she was led around the muddy playground by a bevy of doting little girls – each one vying to hold her hand or pick her up. It surprised me that she was totally willing to wander off with them – considering how closely she sticks to me when new adults are introduced – but I suppose children are markedly different than adults to her. She went down the slide, sat in the beached paddle boat with her brother and his friends, marched up and down the school’s three steps at least fifty times with a rotating cast of pre-k, kindergartners, first and second graders holding her up, and got very muddy and dirty. Then she came home and I changed her clothes, but it was futile since Spike came rampaging in an hour or so later with two of his friends, all of them stricken with Spring Fever and baby love – and they snatched her up and literally ran with her outside, bare feet and all, to swing her on the hammock and let her squish her toes in the mud. There was a nice moment at the swing set when all three boys were sprawled on the ground, pretending to have been kicked there by her short little legs, and she was swinging and grinning and I thought, how nice to have a big brother. I myself have two, one of whom I absolutely, slavishly adored when I was a kid, but I don’t think I have many memories of either of them or their friends paying much attention to me. For some reason, in this world, Bell is a novelty of the highest order – and Spike and his friends bring her gifts, hold her hands, and just now, are starting to be able to play with her with delight and something bordering on boyish worship. I don’t know how long this will last – but I had a vision of this summer flash before me – big boys running all around my yard, and little Bell toddling to catch up on her plump little legs.

Something in the quality of Bell’s affection has changed this couple of weeks or so. Linda once told me that she remembered the day that Emme Lu’s hugs suddenly became real – not just perfunctory, but with filled with love and emotion. And that has happened with Fang Fang - suddenly she wraps her arms around my neck and nestles her head into my shoulder, and squeezes with warmth and love and delight. Suddenly she gazes soulfully into my eyes and offers up wet, drooling baby kisses pressed passionately against my mouth. She has started making bird like cooing noises of happiness, she has started to sigh contentendly when she is nestled against me, she has started saying something that sounds like a breathy, “haaaaaaaaaaaa” when she hugs up against me or Ryan.

And I think that things are starting to change between her and Spike. I think, for Spike, the hardest part of all of this has been just how much he adores his sister. “Mom, when I look into her eyes, there is nothing I wouldn’t do for her,” he told me the other day. And he wants to hold her and kiss her and hug her (it’s all a little Lenny in Mice and Men like sometimes) and her general reaction (and this is her reaction right now to basically anyone trying to hold her or kiss her or hug her who is not me – not just how she reacts to Spike) is to grimace or push him away or scream with anger. And so he feels horribly rejected by her. All that love from him! All that two handed pushing away from her. And yet she persists in being so adorably cute that he can’t help but grab her up again and start the whole cycle over.

However, this week, now that he is back in school and she gets plenty of Mom and Mom Alone time during the day, she seems more willing to love on her big brother a little. She has granted some kisses, toddled over and fell against him while practicing her walking skills, smiled at him delightedly when she saw him at school, and today, when he raced her outside and popped her into her beloved swing, I think I saw a gear turn in her head when she realized that her brother might actually be good for something – especially when Mama balks at taking her outside, or giving her something off the floor, or doing exactly what she wants at the very moment she wants it. Big Brother might just be a soft touch! So maybe they will be best friends some day after all. Maybe there will be summer days where my little girl chases my beautiful boy – and they are content with each other’s company. I think I see that possibility. The edge of that love. That change in her affection.