Hyper Extensions

When The Boss is mad, she invariably thrusts out her lower lip in a square pout and presses her face to the floor--from a sitting position.

Other times, I find her asleep in her crib, one foot pressed against her ear.

Flexibility is just one example of how far removed babies are from their grown up counterparts. Another is vocabulary. Though I suppose it's convenient to lump every animal, vegetable and mineral into one category called "dog," it's not very descriptive. Yet another example is a child's utter lack of discernment when it comes to what she will put in her mouth--though I suppose it can be argued that gumming rocks, sticks, solidified dog poop, loose change and live wires is not significantly more enlightened than smoking cigarettes. Not that I would personally make such an argument on the grounds of being hypocritical. Anyhoo.

Occasionally I watch The Boss taking in and pointing out the world around her and I wonder, "who are you?" Then, the extended version: "Who are you going to be?" It's hard to make any determinations based on that tiny human being splayed at my feet, her legs sticking out at ninety degree angles as she buries her mouth in a patch of dirt on the playground.

And that's usually when I realize I forgot the camera. Though I wonder about the future, I am all too aware that the to-be questions will soon be replaced by wistfulness and by backwards glances that lack the joy of all this newness. Today in the toddler section of the department store I was nostalgic for newborn layettes. Not for newborns--oh, no, the wounds are too fresh for that--but for the layettes a first time mother-to-be holds against her face, then her belly, as she dreams for nine months about a lifetime of unknowable days. I remembered visiting that very section while pregnant and looking only at what was before me. A year and change later, it's hard not to look back.

She is wild and fantastic, this boss of mine. She is completely strange. Her emergence forever changed my place in the world. Before, everything was in front of me. I could move forward in any direction. Looking back was an option, but why would I? Now, it's different. I am retrospective. Circumspective. I try to live in the moment, but I will indulge the past. I don't think I will ever again feel the total preoccupation with the future that I experienced as the pregnant mother of my baby girl.

Because now I understand what the future holds.