This morning, after a rare full night’s sleep (and blissfully no hypnopompic sightings for me!), we cuddled for 15 minutes before getting well and truly up.
Amie was enacting “Baby Amie”: she cuddles and coos and you have to hold and shush her like a baby. Then I asked her: “Do you remember what Baby Amie used to do?” She thought for a couple of seconds and answered:
“Sleeping.”
“Yes, and what else did Baby Amie do?”
…
“Did Baby Amie have lots of gung-gung?”
(“Gung-gung” was her/our word for nursing.)
Amie thought deeply for three seconds or so, then her face and eyes lit up with remembrance and joy:
“Ye-es,” she said, smiling broadly. Then:
“Where is gung-gung?”
“Oh, sorry sweetie,” I said, “there’s no more gung-gung” (she weaned herself about six months ago). She nodded understandingly, and then very seriously stated:
“Amie is all finished with gung-gung.”
I found a photograph that captures motherhood so perfectly – in a setting that completes the picture for me. It’s by Philip-Lorca diCorcia, from his Storybook Life. I can’t reproduce it because of copyright, but click here and you’ll see.