Bookishness, Overinterpreted

Saturday, Julia did a new, good, and bittersweet thing. When we returned from the library, I sat and read some of her new books with her, and then went to tend to dinner. For, really, the first time ever, she stayed by herself in the living room to look at the books some more. She laid down on the floor, her face hovering over the open leaves, and carefully flipped through them all: the elephant book, the one about the pigs with manners, the nonsense-rhyme Seuss, back to the elephants, on to the counting mice...

I watched from the kitchen, impressed by her concentration, happy to see her so adorably absorbed in her books, and a little - selfishly - sad to realize that she was developing an inner life right there (paradoxically) before me. Don't get me wrong - she still uses her fearsomely large vocabulary to convey most everything she feels, good or bad. But those ten minutes of silence as she looked through her books were ten minutes of her thinking her own thoughts, of her inhabiting her own head, of having privacy. It's obviously the harbinger of the "No Trespassing" sign on her 16-year-old's bedroom door, but also of her separating her emotions from her expressions and of her separating herself from her parents. Necessary, of course, but sad nonetheless.

Perhaps not coincindentally, the three days since then have been marked by absolutely typical tantrums about, say, going "oop-shtair" when she wants to stay "dwan-shtair," or having to go "in-hide" when she wants to be "hout-hide" with the icy rain and the windchill. Perhaps a slightly taller barrier between emotion and expression won't be the worst thing...