When Louisa was born six and a half years ago, I essentially forgot about poor Jo for two years. I remember going to sleep the night before Lou's birth, watching beautiful little Josie sleep next to me, and thinking, poor baby Louisa, I can never love you as much as I do Josie. And the next day it was, Josie who?
Such is the power of hormones. When the hormones wore off about two years later, it was like waking up and going, oh hi, Jo! Where ya been?
As Josie has gotten older, she's come to be a lot more like me than I ever expected. We don't like ALL of the same things, but I wasn't exaggerating when I said that if I were ten she'd be my best friend. (I never try to forget that I'm her mom, not her friend, and that she'll have lots of friends in her life but only one mom. She needs me to be her mom, not her friend. There's a big and important difference.)
And then there's Lou.
Lou is my handful. "I like to have fun!" she confided loudly today to my housekeeper's husband. And does she ever.
Lou is funny, goofy, hyper and generally full of beans. She makes faces and jumps on the furniture and talks so fast sometimes you can't understand a thing she says. She terrorizes the poor cats and throws herself in my lap for big hugs. She is six. And you know what? Speaking as a mother, six is so far my least favorite age.
Josie drove me CRAZY when she was six, and I forget that, now that she's ten and a helpful, sweet girl. But Lou is six--SO six, like Eloise and Ramona--and like them, she's hell on wheels.
Today I took those hellish wheels on the road down the street to a cafe she loves. Josie and Daddy went to see Uncle Ben in a community theater production down south and so Lou and I were left to have a date.
What did Lou want to do with Mama? She wanted to go for gelato. The way to Lou's heart is very much through her stomach, and if there is a resemblance between us, it starts there. Gelato was followed by cocoa and then a toasted baguette with jam. She behaved herself a lot better than I expected, and I tried very hard to be present for her and not bury myself in the paper or anything.
I was happy with what I saw. She brought her rag doll with her and fed her bits of toast and whipped cream from her cocoa. "She's a very messy eater, I can't do a thing with her," sighed Lou, wiping whipped cream off poor Raggedy's apron.
She climbed on the furniture a little, but not as much as I feared. She didn't bug the somber-looking people typing on laptops. She said thank you to the barista for her cocoa and toast. And she only got jam on one side of the vinyl couch we were sitting on. (I cleaned it off.) And when it was time to go, she didn't make a fuss, but put her little hand in mine and walked down the street, skipping a little and admiring the early fall afternoon.
If I can manage to hang on until she's eight, I may be able to connect with this kid yet. I hope so, because sometimes she's just delightful, like today.
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