Paper

6:54 a.m. -- 4 mos., 23 days

If personality is indicated, at least in part, by a person's preferences, every day we witness further developments in Baby A's. To wit:

Baby A loves paper.

Yesterday, opening a letter with her in my arms, I made the mistake of handing her the empty envelope. Eyes widening, she grabbed it like a ravenous animal tearing into carrion. Within seconds, it was shredded and crumpled, with bits of it stuffed in her mouth and sodden pieces sticking to her hand. Life had offered her nothing so enrapturing in weeks.

Then I made mistake number two: I took the envelope away, every last soggy clump of it. Again Baby A's widened, this time in horror. Was I really to be the agent who deprived her of this Nirvana? I was. Her grief passed quickly through denial and landed on anger, where it lingered for at least 20 minutes, longer than I've ever seen her in any obvious "mood."

Expressed in a series of outraged shrieks, her high dudgeon was unbudgeable. She allowed me to hold her, but when I tried to further intrude into her rage she spurned me, turning her face from my coos and kisses.

In a transference little commented on by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, her grief stages were then assumed by her father.

Bargaining had no effect. After depositing the envelope detritus in the trash, we hustled upstairs to her favorite current toy, a colored set of plastic keys: No solace there. We stepped into her favorite current device, a doorway jumper, where, lightly supervised, she often happily bounces for a quarter-hour: Not this time. The shrieks continued.

I moved into depression, and we moved over to our bed, laden with other toys: Useless. I lay on my back and swung her in the "weeza-beeza flying" game, usually sure-fire: No dice.

Not until I'd landed at acceptance ("The baby will cry continually for the next six hours, until M returns and can replace my hapless ass") did we arrive at a solution. To console myself, I turned on Springsteen's new album at a louder than wonted volume. Baby A immediately quieted, intrigued, and we danced for a while until the savage breast was soothed.

Remnants of her rage lingered. She was fussy for a few hours, and the next time we passed the table where we throw the mail, she twisted in my arms to search for the Paradise Lost of her soggy envelope. But the storm had passed.

Later in the day, in a tummy-time session lull, as a reward for some vigorous push-ups I handed her a ripped-out page from a magazine. Mistake number three. She tore into it happily enough, and I was reconciled that she would add processed paper pulp to her all-breast-milk diet.

But the inevitable point had to arrive. I thought I was prepared; when I began to extract the damp clumps from her fists, I had a fresh magazine page at the ready. But the first cut is the deepest, as Rod Stewart noted, and the second page is apparently akin to a rebound relationship -- nice in its way, but a pale echo of the lost love and no true consolation. Fortunately, this incident occurred on our tummy-time carpet, and vigorous rolling proved sufficient distraction.

The upshot: my parental lesson is learned. Perhaps this is preparation for her adolescence, when she considers attaching to other unsuitable partners. At any rate, for now I will create a barrier between her and her objects of desire, and her relationship with the nation's paper products will, for the time being, remain a long-distance one. Love the toy you're with, babe.