Sometimes You Need Bubbles

Pouting through the glass door, I approached cautiously when sliding it open. Immediately she pointed at me, “I c-yose (close) da door on my boo-boo!” she blurted out with her baby girl voice.

Doing my doctor-esque thorough check on her finger and finding no boo-boo to speak of, I suggested we wash her hands. She immediately brightened, yelling “Tuh’mon (Come on), mommy! Tuh’mon!” as she grabbed me by my pointer finger and pulled me as fast as her little body could take me.

Hand-washing is fascinating for her.

“Soap, mommy! Moyuh (more) soap!”

And then I went and did the bestest thing in the entire world – I made bubbles in the sink. Her eyes got big, her tongue stuck out, the edges of her mouth turned upward as she formulated a plan as to how she’d attack the bubbles first. Before she finished that thought, though, she was already into them, raising her fingers, marveling at the mound of bubbles she had perched on each hand.

“Mommy? Div (give) me yooah (your) hand!” she waves her hands, flapping soapy bubbles on the mirror.

I could’ve resisted her cute pleas to rub bubbles all up and down my forearm, but I didn’t. Before me there stood my red-cheeked, green-eyed, curly-headed ball of girl squeaking in delight as she rubbed bubbles on my arm, and I couldn’t do anything but stand there and love her and hope I’d remember this forever.

We played a little, in which she’d wipe off the bubbles, and I’d tease her as she put the towel down by slipping a few bubbles back into that same spot she wiped. And she’d wipe again, and we’d repeat our actions. She never once got angry. She just kept intently wiping, and fixing, and being ‘the mom’, cleaning up, while I, in turn, played the kid and tried her patience with all my might, smiling and laughing and secretly crying at how beautiful she was and how much fun I was having with such a simple task of washing hands. It was thought-provoking, at the very least, to try to do what they do and feel how it must feel for them, sometimes, supposing that it’s not maliciousness, just playfulness, that causes them to do what they do.

I reveled in this reversal, and soaked up every second I could in that shoebox of a half-bathroom, not wanting the bubble supply to run out, not wanting her attention to waver. Ultimately, it did, but not before I snuck in a bubble or twenty onto her nose. She didn’t like it that much, but liked it better on mine.

Boo-boo? What boo-boo? Bubbles win! I say, because of the beautiful moments spent between me and my daughter, that it is me who really won.

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