Today, my baby noticed her leg for the first time.
She was having a bath, kicking away with her little legs as she always does. And then she paused. She looked down. Her face was very serious. She reached out with her hand, and she grabbed hold of her left thigh. Gave it a squeeze. She removed her hand, kicked a little more, and then did it again. What was that? Was it hers?
And then she forgot it and went back to splish-splashing in the water.
I am watching her learn from nothing. She doesn’t currently know that I am a separate person from her. She doesn’t really “know” anything, in what we would think of as the adult sense of the word. She doesn’t understand reality, consciousness, time… she knows only simple things: when she is hungry, or happy, or sad.
Or does she? She experiences emotions, but does she know that she is feeling them? Or does that require you to step outside of yourself - a self-awareness that she could not possibly yet have? Perhaps in those moments, she is joy. She is sadness.
There was a first time that she smiled. And then another first time a few weeks later, when the books told me the previous smile must have been gas, because it’s not possible for a baby to ‘smile’ at that age. I disagree, but that’s okay.
These things happen very slowly. The firsts. The developments. They are so tiny that you might miss them. They don’t come with fireworks or announcements. Like the first day that she held something. I looked down and she was holding the crinkly sunshine on her playmat. Her expression blank, as if it was nothing. When to me, it was everything. That was the first time she had reached out and grabbed something. Previously, you could put your thumb in her hand and she would squeeze it, as a reflex, but she had never reached out and grabbed something of her own accord. Held it for more than a moment. Her hands had made a choice.
And then one day, she reached up with both hands and pushed her bottle away. She seemed to think for a moment, and then, hands either side of the bottle, she pulled it back towards her mouth. She did not drink. But she did it again, as if reasoning with herself, ‘I can have it if I want it… I can push it away if I do not want.’ The tiniest girl, understanding how to take control of her life, in the tiniest way.
And so, when she reached down and held her leg, it was again everything to me. She cannot yet walk, but she will learn to walk on those legs. She doesn’t yet know the wonders of where those legs will take her. Up mountains, around cities, even to a McDonalds after a mad night in her early twenties.
She will dance. I am sure that she will dance.
But none of those things yet, please. Not yet. Not yet.
Today, as I write this, I look down, I reach out, and I give my thigh a small squeeze. My wonderful thigh, that has taken me up mountains, around cities, and to far too many a McDonalds. These are my legs - that once upon a time, I could not use or understand, with which I kicked and splish-splashed as my mother watched over me at bathtime. And which I have, sadly, over the years, neglected, judged or taken for granted.
Today, like my daughter, I notice my legs.
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