thoughts on my daughter

It's been a long time since I've posted. This morning I've been puzzling over something I haven't been able to explain to myself. In general terms, I'm interested in how the most mundane moments in our lives can be really moving. More specifically, I'm trying to figure out why something my 21 month old daughter Daisy says -- "Play wif Play-do Map" -- nearly moves me to tears.

What she is trying to say of course is, "I want to play with the Play-do Mat," a plastic mat upon which she can play with her Play-do set. I think just the simple earnest expression of her desire to play with this basic children's toy is in itself moving. Aren't people's simple pleasures -- eating a not fancy favorite food, playing with an "unexciting" toy, or liking an uncool TV show (unironically) -- a big part of what lends them their humanity? One way of thinking is that what makes people special is each person's putative "uniqueness." That certainly must be true; otherwise we would like all people equally and see few distinctions or variations. But I feel that it's at least equally true that we love and care for others precisely because of their ordinary or even generic qualities, those seemingly meaningless and empty gestures, habits, or decisions that weave the moments of their lives together.

But I also think Daisy's particular formulation is important. The use of the verb without a subject -- not "I want to play with" but "Play with" -- seems touching to me, maybe because the lack of syntactial specificity and sophistication makes her want seem more basic and natural. The mispronunciations -- "map" for "mat," "wif" for "with" -- also have this effect, as anyone observing any child knows.

When I think of Daisy negotiating her small way through this large, complex, and increasingly (it seems) perilous world, expressing a simple wish to slighlty enjoy herself by sitting on a three by three plastic mat, I find it adorably sad. It's hard not to resort to cliches about childhood and innocence, and I feel that I'm getting at something deeper -- or maybe not -- maybe part of becoming a parent is shedding the habit of dismissing cliches about childhood and innocence and recognizing that you yourself are much more ordinary than you ever thought (if you ever were pretentious enough -- as I was -- to think otherwise).