ON CHRISTMAS Day, Socra Marie decided she would crawl, causing great amusement to her family. She seemed to view entertaining us as her main goal in life, beyond sleeping, eating, and defecating.
I have this theory about children. They come into the world with a certain genetic endowment, certain memories from the time in the womb, and perhaps certain expectations. They check out how the world reacts to this package and then adjust their behavior to fit the reaction, relying on certain possibilities that are part of the package.
This is all probably nonsense. Yet it helps to explain our younger daughter. She is still a very determined young woman, aggressively hanging on to life.
However, she has also decided that the most effective way to do that is to charm the reality in which she finds herself. She has learned the two magic words—“Ma” and “Da”—and uses them indiscriminately of her parents, her siblings, Ethne and Danuta, and even the dogs. Everyone seems to be delighted by this, so she continues with a happy grin.
The doctors tell us that she is already substantially beyond full-term babies of her age in intelligence.
“Do we want a friggin’ genius, Dermot Michael?” Nuala complains with notable lack of sincerity.
We are not out of the woods yet. Something could still go wrong, though Nuala dismisses that with a wave of her hand. She insists that she knew from the beginning that the little wisp would be fine. When I ask her if it’s her real self or her fey self that knows it, she replies impatiently that her fey self IS her real self, which I ought to know anyway.
I don’t doubt her confidence, but earthling that I am I will relax after the second birthday.
She appeared on the Nuala Anne at Christmas program in which Nuala sang songs of hope from many religions and dedicated the show to all premature babies and their parents and the doctors and nurses who take care of them. She had already promised that the profits from the show and her next record would go to more research on the subject.
She also used the quote about the only two absolutes.
For reasons I don’t fully understand and don’t want to, the children, without much coaching, know just how to act when they’re on TV in their brief scene with their mother. This year the two kids joined herself in singing “Silent Night” to their little sister, Nellie right on key and the Mick not too far off key. The latter fortunately was in his “adoration” phase of the cycle and not in his “I hate her” phase.
Socra Marie smiled and chortled and goo-gooed to the whole world, I dare say causing millions of tears to fall. Maybe billions.
A lot of them from me.
“Dermot Michael,” my wife said to me after the taping was over, “would you ever think we might let the dogs join us next year?”
“It’s a brilliant idea, altogether!” I lied.
We took all three of them to see the Christmas tree and the window displays at Marshall Field’s, but only after I assured Nuala Anne that Ole Marsh’s family no longer owned it.
All three rugrats were impressed, each in their own way. Nellie studied each window very carefully and reviewed it for us. The Mick reported that the Nutcracker had become a Prince, which he thought was a very good idea. Socra Marie, secure in the sack around her mother’s breasts, laughed and cooed and pointed in delight, especially at the Christmas tree, which she called “Da!”
A couple in their forties approached us, short, grimeyed people with thin lines for lips.
“Is that a premature child?” The woman demanded in the tone of a prosecuting attorney.
“She is,” Nuala said proudly, “she was born fifteen weeks early and she’s ten months old.”
“We believe,” the husband growled, “you’re socially irresponsible for keeping that child alive. It will have no quality of life.”
“It will be a constant drain on the public schools, the health-care system, and on the American taxpayer,” the woman added.
“You should have treated it like a miscarriage,” the husband concluded.
The two of them waited eagerly for our defense.
Socra Marie who had been smiling at them sensed that these were not nice people and began to wail. The other two, not understanding the exact words, still knew that their little sister was under attack. Thunderclouds appeared on their foreheads and on their mother’s.
“She’ll go to the Catholic schools,” I said, stupefied by their arrogance.
“I might have known you were Catholics!” the woman snarled. “Keeping this thing alive is the sort of thing Catholics do.”
Socra Marie was now screaming at them. Nuala lifted her out of the sack and sang to her in Irish. Then she turned to the couple, who were clearly enjoying the prospect of a screaming match.
“Sure, aren’t you entitled to your opinion,” she said gently as she patted the still angry little wisp of humanity. “And we respect your right to express it. But you’re wrong!”
She turned and walked in the opposite direction, singing once again as her bedraggled family trailed along after her. I turned on the couple, who looked like they were about to follow us and pointed my finger in sharp warning at them. Unlike most people they had good sense to be frightened by me.
“Och, Dermot Michael,” my wife said as she eased our daughter back into the pouch, “haven’t I grown up something terrible? I actually acted like an adult, didn’t I now?”
“Like a grand duchess dismissing a fly.”
On Christmas Day the dogs were present with the four of us, as Socra Marie tried to crawl. She would lift up her rear end, move her hands forward, and then fall on her face as the rest of her body tried and then refused to cooperate.
We’d all laugh. She’d roll over and grin at us and then try again.
She was too young for a twenty-five-week child to crawl. No one, however, had told her that.
Finally, thanks be to God, (I think) she got it and moved ahead, one body length toward Fiona, who warily moved back. The wisp of humanity looked up at us, a party to a great conspiracy, then tried again. Fiona barked softly and moved back once more.
“Da,” said our daughter, pointing at Fiona.
“We won’t have to stew about her anymore, will we now, Dermot Michael?”
“I hope not.”
We would have to worry for another year. She was still tiny and tired easily.
O YE OF LITTLE FAITH!
The Devil quoting scripture.
The third attempt at a crawl wasn’t magic. The little tyke ran out of steam. We, however, applauded and she cooed contentedly as Nuala picked her up, held her close, and sang one of those Irish lullabies. She followed up with “Stille Nacht” and we all hummed with her.