My niece Eva is a force of nature—unpredictable, unstoppable, constantly changing. One minute she’s a whirling tornado, the next, a gentle breeze tickling the back of your neck. She’s two-and-a-half years old, and we’ve just come back from visiting her (oh, and her parents, my brother, Dylan, and sister-in-law, Nicole) in San Francisco.
With her honey-blond ringlets, proud little potbelly, and soft, rosy skin, Eva looks like an angel. For a moment. Then you look into her eyes, an unusual and intense shade of deep-green bordering on brown, and you quickly understand that she would be contemptuous of being so simplistically characterized. There is a LOT going on behind those eyes—you can see it … you can almost hear it.
I love watching Eva think. On this last visit, I could see her sizing up me and Craig in terms of how we might be useful. It took no time at all: Craig would be her rowdy comrade in mischief, and I would be her quiet-time companion. To know where Craig and Eva might be in the apartment, I'd just follow the shrieks and hysterical laughter. When Eva tired of horsing around, she’d join me for a "read"; me with my book, and she with hers (most often, a novel or non-fiction behemoth—the more pages, the better). She’d be silent, but for the odd comment on her tome: “This is a very good book, you know.” When I noted that mine was not up to snuff, she suggested that Uncle Craig buy me a new one. So wise so young.
She gets very girly with me. When I pointed out that we had the same colour of hair (“yellow,” she called it—not quite the glorious shade I had imagined), this prompted a two-day flurry of hair brushing and floofing and checks in the mirror to look at the awesome results.
Eva’s hair fascination on the visit may have been what compelled her to contemplate Craig’s own crown, which is beautifully bare. She might have been considering her own fulsome locks before pronouncing on his, because her assessment was gently and quietly delivered: “Uncle Craig, you have no hair … just head.” He protested that in fact he did have some hair, it was just very short. She amended “no hair” to “short hair” thereafter, but you could tell it was out of kindness.
When Eva gets mad, she is relentless. This girl knows what she wants, and she won’t be put off course … until it’s clear her theatrics aren’t serving her purpose any more. Again, that’s when you see the wheels turning. After venturing on to the street after being told repeatedly by Nicole not to, Eva found herself with some “quiet time” on her hands behind the closed doors of her room. Before being thus deposited, Eva had also managed to bash Nicole a couple of times with her little fist. Nicole calmly told her that she would come in to talk with her when Eva felt up to saying sorry.
Thirty seconds later, the howl: “Mommy!?”
Nicole ventures in. “Yes Eva?”
“I’m SOR-R-Y!!”
“That’s nice, but what are you sorry for?”
Silence. Then, slowly, “Hitting you?”
“Okay, but why did we have to come in the room in the first place? Did mommy tell you not to do something that you did anyway?”
Silence. Then defiant humming.
“Did mommy tell you not to go on the sidewalk?”
“NO!”
It was too much for Eva—total capitulation is so hard to swallow. She’s a feisty one, is Eva. She took a few more minutes to consider her situation, and then presto! She was back in high spirits, as if nothing had happened.
As taxing as Eva can be in her periodic rages and resistances, she is so strategic and funny that I have to look away and muffle my laughter. I am not the mommy or daddy after all, I am the auntie.
And I love being the auntie.