“You have to stop asking me out, Ralph. I told you. I’m not interested.”
“You don’t know what you need, but I do. You’re going to regret it.”
Good old Ralph. I can still remember him in high school, skinny and pale and always prepared for class. Now he was a triathlon athlete, and if he spent a whole day working, I never saw it. Don’t we change, now, when we least think we can.
“The people where you work,” Jamie had said to me once, “what are they like?” So I’d shown her the office catalog and described some of the personalities.
“It seems sad, doesn’t it, that all those people are just so lonely,” she said when I finished.
“What do you mean?” I asked her, curious. “They have families, some of them, and friends. The office isn’t all that nice, maybe, but they have lives outside the office, or most of them do. Whatever on earth do you mean, my Jamie?”
“There’s only one of them,” she answered. “Like you, Mama. You’re sad. Because there’s only one of you. You don’t see all the others who are there with you, the way I do.”
I had felt disturbed then, aware that if the doctors heard her talk that way they’d come and get her and put her in the hospital again.
“Don’t you talk about that to anyone, you hear me? They won’t understand.”
“I know. Of course I won’t. I’m a big girl. Come on, let’s go feed the ducks. Come on, Mama!” And she had raced off, then, her young feet flying across the grass down to the lake where people were rowing boats and having picnics on the sloping lawn.
I watched her with the ducks as they all ran up to her and inspected the bag of popcorn in her hand. They weren’t aggressive with Jamie. She bent down and petted each one. I should have called out to her, told her to keep her distance, but I knew I didn’t need to worry. After she handed them the last of the food, she ran up to me and sat down smiling, her eyes glowing with happiness. Jamie was a special child. All that and more. Sometimes I thought my love for my daughter would break me in two, for I wanted so much to protect her, and didn’t know if I could.