Best Friends… Molly Rose and Justine

Some of you may know, my best friend is 2 years and 6 months old. I just left her room, as tonight I got to put her to bed, as mommy and daddy are (still) out with their friends. As happened last time I put Molly Rose to bed, I laid down under a blanket beside her crib, her in her crib, the two of us side by side, talking, and she fell asleep holding my hand.

This is a friendship I could never have seen coming, but it may well be the deepest friendship I’ve ever had, if nothing else, it is certainly the most joyous and loving. A month or so ago I turned her on to the classic Disney Winnie the Pooh cartoons, childhood favorites of mine. We sat together on the couch, her nestling in close against me, cuddly, and saying, “We’re friends!” Of course we are, my dear, the best of friends. She’s not always cuddly, she is, after all, a toddler, and is at times fiercely independent… which I encourage. Of course, I love it when she’s cuddly, but I love her no less when she isn’t. I let her lead. Tonight, she was unusually relaxed, cuddly, and easy to entertain.

I had brought along McCartney’s splendid animated version of the great children’s book, “Tuesday,” promising her a cartoon with flying frogs in it. McCartney has done, I believe, 4 cartoons with this particular animation company, and “Tuesday” is by far the best, especially towards the end when he and Dustin Hoffman are doing the voices together. “Tuesday” is not only majestically and beautifully scored by McCartney, but it is one of his masterpieces as a producer of animation (the other being the far darker and far more experimental “Daumier’s Law”). Well, I’ve watched a lot of cartoons with Molly Rose, and I’ve known her since she was a baby, but this night she took me wholly by surprise. Firstly, she was positively enchanted by this charming cartoon, but she made an aesthetic observation that took my breath away. About mid-way through the cartoon, a lovely shot of a small town at sunset spread it’s sky blue-pink glory across the screen, and Molly simply said, “Beautiful!”

It was beautiful, but even more beautiful was not only hearing her say that, but realizing just how far she has come. It seems like just yesterday I felt so helpless, never knowing what she really wanted or needed as a helpless infant, and now here she was knowing that something, a work of art, was beautiful, and saying as much. This, to me, was the most magical moment I have observed in her development, other than the sarcastic and knowing smile she shot me last week.

Ah, last week, I had come over and she just wasn’t interested, had been sucked into a loop of YouTube videos that teach color and such. She was barely looking at me! Finally I announced to her dad, “Well, I guess if Molly Rose is going to watch “A C la” (that’s Molly Rose for watching YouTube), I’m going home.” I got up kissed her head, then sat down with her dad (Tom), and talked about how I was going to go now. Molly looked up from the computer, turned her head slowly towards me, and looked at me with the most sarcastic and knowing smile, then turned back to A C la. I said to Tom, “Did a toddler just call my bluff?”

Later that night, we could not get her to bed. The powers of Mom, Dad, and Justine combined could not get her to go to bed. Lately she has been sleeping with a golden murti of Ganesh in her crib, at least when I’m around, and she stares at Lord Ganesh and says, “I have Ganesh.” When I’m around, she’ll usually have a pair of my wrist bangles in her crib with her. That night I heard the rattle of them hitting the floor, as she often tosses things out, When I was called back in to try and get her to sleep, I figured I’d get my bangles up off the floor, but could only find one of them. I asked, “Where’d the other one go?” not at all thinking she knew, but she stood up in her crib and looked around, asking, “Where other go?” Neither of us could find it, I eventually decided this might be keeping her wound up, so I said, “It’s not important,” and went to her side, then I looked down at her wrist, she looked down at her wrist… there it was… my huge purple bangle on her wrist. At the same time we both looked up, our eyes connected, and we laughed together. For me, it has been beautiful to watch her develop so much that she is making aesthetic observations, giving me knowingly sarcastic looks, and getting jokes and funny situations.

Best Friends… Molly Rose and Justine 2

And so it went tonight, I knew she just wasn’t going to be able to go to bed knowing her best friend was in the other room, so I set up my sleepover bedding beside her crib, settled in, and worked the electronic toy from her hand by giving her her Ganesh and telling her the story of how Ganesh banished the moon from the sky after the moon laughed at him for having eaten so much laddoo. I was surprised how engaged she was in a story that had no picture book to go with it, but I knew Molly loved the moon and Ganesh, and often asks “Where the moon go?” And that, of course, is part of the story of Ganesh and the moon… where’d the moon go, indeed!

She wound down after that, laid down close to the edge of her crib, I worked my hand into her crib, she took hold of my finger, her tiny fingers wrapped around my finger, and we talked, like any girls at a sleepover. She asked where daddy and mommy were, I told her they always come back. She said, “I always come back,” I told her yes, she does, she goes to daycare and comes back with mommy and daddy, she corrected me, saying, “daddy,” who usually is the one to bring her back. I told her I always come back and that everyone always comes back because they love her. I’ve been teaching her late sixties slang, so I said, “groovy,” to which she replied, “Groovy… right ON!” Then she reminded me we were best friends as I sang the same song my grandfather used to sing to my mother, “You are my sunshine.” Slowly, after a little more chat about Ganesh, best friends, and mommy and daddy, she changed position, took hold of my thumb, and drifted off to sleep. I looked in through the crib at her beautiful little face, and realized that I’ve rarely ever felt as good as I did in that moment.

It’s impossible to relate just how magical this friendship is. It’s impossible to express my joy at being loved and loving someone else with such purity of heart. And it’s far more impossible to describe the peace and contentment… and yet more impossible to express to anyone just how dear and beautiful she is to me.

And that, my friends, is what it’s like to have a best friend who is 2 years and 6 months old. Splendid… huh?

Ganesh, please take care of and bless my saawariya, my sone yaar… our Molly Rose.