Mother daughter and me

I could tell that the show was in part for my benefit - the somersault, the cartwheel, and all the aborted attempts to stand on her head. Charmed no end by this toddler, I had to share my delight with her mother who also stood nearby. I noticed that the mother was observing her daughter as though she were reading a book, silently seeking protection from the world - and probably from me - by burying herself in identification with its narrator. The young girl was her possession and her extension. I could see too that mother and daughter both sought my approval. Though this mother never acknowledged it, I am sure that every inflection of my voice was registered.

All of a sudden, the little girl jumped up on a chair in front of me. Eye-to-eye, but too close to focus, we rubbed noses. As she backed away I could see that the chair had disappeared and that she wasn’t a little girl any more, that she was in fact just as tall as I was, grinning from ear to ear with a mouth full of braces. What a sweety I thought to myself.

The next thing I knew she was running out the back door in tears, crying ”Mommy, mommy why do you keep coming in and out”. I also began to wonder where and why her mother had suddenly disappeared. With hardly a chance to reflect on the chain of events, I heard the young girl call out: ”Mommy, why do you keep running in and out, it’s making me so sleepy.” This was the first time I had ever heard my niece speak Swedish. (While Swedish is her mother’s tongue it is not her own native language.) Given the intensity of this young girl's pursuit, I thought to myself that she must have confused the Swedish word for ’tired’ with the word for ’sleepy’. But to tell you the truth I was still so very sleepy and tired myself when I woke from this dream, that we are all certainly one .