Niece

N just turned one on Dec. 9. She toddles around a lot now. She mimics sounds and simple actions like clapping and putting a cell phone to the ear (and so it begins..). She’s grown so much from when I last saw her at 3 months, but isn’t at all as big as she seems in pictures. She is the splitting image of R and M.

 I cannot help but sound matter-of-fact when discussing N because I am unable to find a way to adequately describe the presence of a child. See, I’m not one of those people whose ovaries flutter at the mention of say, baby lotion. My ovaries, in fact, are unusually impervious to baby talk of any kind, and I almost never get the urge to procreate. Baby pictures do not move this stone heart of mine, nor do videos of babies bobbing wildly to the theme song of Jack’s Big Music Show. But there is something about actually having a baby around (and also, perhaps not being the one who has to do all the feeding, bottle-sterilizing and diaper-changing) that has made me vaguely fantasize about my own spawn.

 It might be her voice as she coos in excitement at the discovery of her belly-button. Her giggling at her mother’s exaggerated laughter. Her wobbly gait from room to room as she explores the home in which she’s growing up so quickly. But I think the thing that gets you most of all is when a child comes up to you and looks at you imploringly with her arms outstretched, wanting you to pick her up. This total dependence, while probably very hard on the parent that has to devote every hour of the day attending to the child’s every need at the expense of his or her own, can be intoxicating to visitors like me. This child actually needs and wants my attention! I don’t really have to do much but I am needed and my attention is wanted. I want to attribute some of this to how much of a lonely pathetic loser I am sometimes, but I think most of us have a primal urge to be needed.

 N needs to be engaged. Every. Waking. Minute. At any given point in time, N has at least one adult reducing his or herself to a human generator of animal sounds. The animal sound generator stops only to tell N to take a potentially lethal object from the crevices of the sofa out of her mouth. And then gets right back to squawking like Bongo bird next second. 

 But how will I squawk, breast-feed, lull to sleep, pull the loaded guns out of my child’s mouth and manage to dress myself and shower all at the same time?