Dan had to work late tonight & it threw off the whole routine. He missed dinner & bedtime, which is the key Daddy-daughter element of the day. Sometimes they watch sports, sometimes they play, always they sing. Lately he’s been working on feeding therapy with Lydia & he gets her to do things none of the rest of us do 🙏🏻 It’s not often that he misses a night, but a special event at the hospital kept him at work, so Lydia had to settle for Mom. When I told her it was time to brush her teeth, that’s when she really keyed in that things were awry. Dinner, fine. But Dad does NOT miss the sacred bedtime routine! Her confusion was so great that it prompted the extraordinary: she simultaneously signed & verbally asked me, “Daddy?”
Sweet Lyds knows our names but almost never uses them. She calls other people by their names much more frequently. We hear the names of her teachers at school & church regularly. Grandma & grandpa are also very frequent. Then her brothers’ names. But very very rarely does she say “Daddy,” & never ever does she say “Mama” or “Mom.” We don’t know why this is. I have an early video of her imitating us saying the word “mama,” but calling me something never “caught on.” In fact, she wanted & needed ME the other day & just sort of whined, “Mmmmmm!” & we laughed as I joked, “Is that it?! Is that my name?!”
So “Daddy” was a big deal. She MISSED him.
To smooth over my lack of being Dad, I got her ready for bed & took her outside to the hammock swing. That’s OUR thing, & I knew it would blissfully send her off to dreamland. It did. But in the 20 or so minutes between when she giggled as I kicked off the ground to push us higher & higher and when I watched her eyelids bat heavily shut & felt her body sink trustingly into mine to the rhythm of the creaking cotton fibers, she asked a few times for “blanket?” which is also a new word. And I thought for a moment about the words that I DO receive. “Blanket?” “Comb hair?” We believe Lydia is a gestalt language processor, & these are her ways of asking for comfort, or “Will you snuggle me? Be with me?” I thought some more & realized that I was the first person she asked “eat?” & “stuck” & “help, please.” And of course her favorite 100x a day, “show?” 😅 I was the first person who encouraged her to sing when she was too shy to try, & I am the one who knows what every noise she makes really means—pain, fear, joy, impatience. I am the bringer of things, the solver of problems, the wiper of tears, the interpreter, the anticipator, the rock. I am the one who has always been there & who, she assumes, always will be. Perhaps this is why I have “no name.”
I am a presence; an understanding.
I AM Mom.
What a statement, without any words at all. 💛
