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April 27, 2007 Frances Friday: Best Friends 
One day last year when I had picked Frances up from daycare and was driving her home, I sang her a silly, made-up song and turned around so I could see her reaction. She was staring at me with bright, wide-open eyes and a big soft smile; her face said "I love you completely" more clearly than any words she was capable of using at the time. "I'm doing something right," I thought, though as anyone can tell you, you have to work really hard to make an infant or toddler hate its mother. Still, I've never forgotten that moment, that one moment when I got to see that I already had the one thing I wanted more than anything else. I wish I could put it in a bell-jar, protect it from the storms and chills of growing up, and know that she would always love me that much. I don't expect to ever see that look on her face again--not directed at me, anyhow--but I'm so happy to have seen it even once. Frances is entering a snuggly stage. Normally, when she watches one of her "best friends" on TV (the Grinch, or Horton the Elephant, or Sam-I-Am are currently on heavy best-friend rotation), she sits in her lion chair by herself, but lately she wants to sit beside me on the couch. I lift her up and she takes advantage while my arms are still raised to snuggle in so that I am forced to wrap my arms around her. She leans in to me. I kiss the top of her head and stroke her unnaturally soft arms. She tells me what her best friends are up to: "Oh no! Horton is sad! He's tired. He has to find the clover in the field. Are there a lot of clovers? Poor Horton. He is sad. Now he's happy! He found them! ... There are the monkeys. Where is the yop? Is that the yop? Oh, the monkeys are mean! They are singing! Horton is sad! There is the yop! Now the monkeys are nice." She also comes running to hug our knees, lately, which she hasn't done before. Only most of the time they're not hugs. She will wrap both arms around my thigh and hold on so tight I can't move; "what a great hug," I'll say. "Thank you sweetie." "That wasn't a hug!" Frances will say. "I'm holding you up. I'm saving you." "Oh sweetness, you don't have to save me." I'll pick her up and we'll have a traditional hug using arms and shoulders; she'll thump me on the back and burrow her head into my shoulder. And I'll wonder. Is it the thought that counts? Posted by Andrea at April 27, 2007 7:59 AM under Frances Friday EMAIL this entry (comments fields are below this section) Comments Oh my goodness, what an amazing child! "I'm saving you." If she only knew how true that was, many days, right? Posted by: Mary at April 27, 2007 7:39 AM
She is such a sweet and loving girl! How lucky you are to have such love on a daily basis. Posted by: ccw at April 27, 2007 8:51 AM
More than once, each of my children has saved me with a squeeze. Sweet, sweet Frances! Posted by: yankee,transferred at April 27, 2007 9:08 AM
What a lovely story. Thank you for the Blogging Against Disablism link. Posted by: Nowheymama at April 27, 2007 1:00 PM
Ah.....us too [we call it the the hobble hug] Posted by: mcewen at April 27, 2007 1:48 PM
Wonderfully told! A precious moment to be sure. Posted by: Miche at April 27, 2007 2:57 PM
But if it's the thought that counts, what does it mean when my little Peanut Butter tells me, "No kisses." *wink* She's adorable. As usual. :-D Posted by: Peanutbuttersmum at April 28, 2007 2:54 PM
Frances is very clear and means what she says. She is saving you, whether you think you need it or not. Posted by: Karen at April 30, 2007 12:15 PM
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Change is God (Octavia Butler, Parable Series) "If the writer is a socially privileged person--particularly a White or a male or both--his imagination may have to make an intense and conscious effort to realize that people who don't share his privileged status may read his work and will not share with him many attitudes and opinions that he has been allowed to believe or pretend are shared by 'everybody.' Since the belief in a privileged view of reality is no longer tenable outside privileged circles, and often not even within them, fiction written from such an assumption will make sense only to a decreasing, and increasingly reactionary, audience. Many women writing today, however, still choose the male viewpoint, finding it easier to do so than to write from the knowledge that feminine experience of reality is flatly denied by many potential readers, including the majority of critics and professors of literature, and may rouse defensive hostility and contempt. The choice, then, would seem to be between collusion and subversion; but there's no use pretending that you can get away without making a choice. Not to choose, these days, is a choice made. All fiction has ethical, political and social weight, and sometimes the works that weigh the heaviest are those apparently fluffy or escapist fictions whose authors declare themselves 'above politics,' 'just entertainers,' and so on." Ursula le Guin Email Frances! frances AT athenadreaming DOT org You can email her mother too (that's me):
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The title of this blog was taken from the short story "The Language of Nna Mmoy" by Ursula le Guin in her collection, Changing Planes. I won't tell you why or how, because I want you to read the story and figure it out for yourself.
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