My daughter clings to me. She is tired, or bored or lonely. She needs infant activities that she thinks I can give her—I and only I. She will not play. She will not look at her books. She will not stuff things into the couch, a current favorite infant activity.
Instead, she needs to sit on my lap, her legs stretched out on my thigh. It is times like these that I both cherish and resent. For there are bills to pay, a bathroom to paint, the floor to sweep. She demands and I, unwilling to put up with her crying, give in. She wins by whining and the manner of her victory doesn't bother her a bit.
She knows what baby activities she needs. Whether I understand the need is not important to her, only that the need is met. She is fine for the moment. She turns her feet back and forth and I grab her toes. I turn on the TV and puppets dance in front of us. I smell her hair.
This is what I wanted—this that cannot be listed and crossed off at the end of the day. No one will notice that I sat here. She will not even remember, no more than I can recall the days of my own life before I could speak more than a dozen words.
But maybe I am wrong. Maybe she will remember--not the day, or the room, or the show on TV, but the feeling of having just what she needed right when she needed it most. And maybe, in the long run, that will make all the difference.
Maria Quimby is a mom and writer in Kensington, New Hampshire.
This article is adapted from Maria's article "All The Difference," which first appeared in Welcome Home, July 1998, published by the Family and Home Network.