About

> Stella has the softest little head with those perpetually messy red curls and the way she moves her head around now that the tumour is changing her. She bobbles a bit and nestles under your chin or against your cheek or your shoulder and she has the softest little head. I slept beside her, both of us totally out, for hours the other day, our heads together and holding hands. I want to remember what she feels like in these small intimacies, my physical memory vying for engagement in this slow process of preparing to give her up. She must feel that too because she has started to choose me to reach for more often, and her physical closeness is such a comfort.
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> Yesterday she came out to show me her boo boo, and explain that she had a band-aid on her shin because tutu gave her a raspberry. Yesterday she called me into the bedroom to proudly show off her naked bum while aim changed her diaper, then let me finish dressing her and I almost had her off in play when she noticed aim trying to take a lunch break at the table with a plate of sandi's chicken and promptly put a stop to it. The other day I was playing with her at marilyn's and mish said to me its so great to have this break and stella looked up at the word "break", held out her arms and returned herself to mishi. Stella is smart, and tricky, and is perhaps becoming more of both as it gets harder for her to squeeze the words she wants to say out into the air where we can hear them. I have taken to asking her questions now quietly in her ear and appreciating the now characteristic pauses and hair twirls while my question goes in, tumbles around in her mind, and sometimes provokes an entire paragraph or sometimes just a sentence or an almost imperceptible shake of her head in horizontal or vertical motion. I am tuning into the very subtle stella signals, the signs of anger before she gets angry and the barely there smirk that will turn into an explosion of a smile in a minute or two.
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> We took her and gracie to zephyr last friday to get out of the city for the day. She was in my arms for such a long time, directing the precise collection of toys around us, whose voice to do, who should set the store up and put the baby bear to bed and get the bubba and lie on the couch and drive the tractor. She grabbed my face and turned it so our noses were touching and said, hi, Jula and grinned in a lovely genuine expression of greeting to me in my essential self, past my face and all of my hang-ups, straight to the core part of me that experiences real connection so very rarely. She wanted me to hold her hand all the way up and back in the car and I had all that time to figure out which way it is easiest for her to get a comfortable grip on my thumb which even in her deep sleep she can maintain.
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> She likes to play food-based games, which is great since so much of my head revolves around food anyway. We plan menus, go shopping, all in our heads and with the help of whatever happens to be around us, sticks and stones and wet sand, or stale goldfish crackers, or the imaginary bottomless pits of our pockets. We cook things, taste them and add another stuffie or sprinkle of diaper rash ointment. We serve them to all of our imaginary friends, 3 and 4 course meals lucky them, and then pack up and drive off to our next everyday adventure (once we've got all the people out of the trunk and into the cab of the car, and dealt with any tummy aches in the crowd).
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> Whenever stella asks me for something I ask her if she wants to come with me to get it and I often turn a simple water request into a traveling mission, probably because I want her to feel in control of her time with me and I like moving with her just like I like moving with gracie. That might be the underlying restlessness that pema chodron talks about, the generalized fear that keeps me from spending too much time in front of the tv or in bed or in a crowd without chasing a kid, carrying a kid, doing the dishes or tripping to the store.
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> A few weeks ago someone crashed into me on my bike and I ended up with a pretty deep cut on my leg. Stella has asked about that cut, kissed it band-aid on and off, patted it under my jeans (ouch, stella pats are not gentle!) so many times its really funny. Her capacity for concern is surprising as she is 2 and living by default in a self-centered universe. Gracie too is so able to sympathize and she was also obsessed with that cut (also with some very un-gentle pats!). It is interesting that all this talk of booboos and band-aids, check-ups and doctor visits have entered our play but only in the most superficial way, in sharp contrast to her real medical reality. I am surprised maybe that she and I can still find joy in this specific theme of play.
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> I am grateful for this time off work, grateful for my health and all the rest that allows me the opportunity to feel grateful for every ounce of this time with stella. Stella has the softest little head and it is a relief to my own much larger and less soft one, to rest against hers, to hold her and only do one thing; be with stella.