Back home in Ireland this week, my daughter plays with her cousins Charlie and Lucy, who are eight days older and eight weeks younger respectively. Lucy and my daughter convey their love by pulling at the candyfloss strands of each other’s wispy hair. Charlie, by contrast, offers kisses to both, but he appears to have learned how to kiss from a manual on giving the perfect headbutt. Thankfully, each glancing bump from his noggin delights his smaller cousins immeasurably, so tears are avoided. We’re not so lucky when it comes to the other order of the day.
Charlie has recently taken his first steps and an arms race – legs race? – has arisen. It would be wrong to be jealous of another baby for having walked before our own, so we avoid saying this and instead focus on making sure we’re second and not third.
My baby is still very much finding her feet. If you think about that phrase for any longer than a few seconds, it doesn’t make much sense in common parlance, but fits her situation perfectly. She spends much of her days doing it quite literally; reaching for her feet as if she’s just discovered they exist, sometimes to engage in her favourite pastime of pulling off her socks, or just to hold them in silent, reverent wonder.
She pulls them inward to get a closer look, bending them towards her face with the elasticity of a contortionist. As for getting on her feet, well, at 14 months old she can just about stand, and is extremely pleased with herself when she does so, it’s just that moving said feet is a harder task.
We’ve come close to a first step a few times – which is to say, we haven’t. Walking is one of those things you can’t really ‘almost’ do. Taking a single step is, arguably, not even walking, so I must concede that taking zero steps is something less again.
We resume training. She’s gripping my index finger tightly. Extremely tightly. She is still so small that her wrist is a single, infinite dimple intersecting the lovely chub of her arm, and the hand that emerges from the other end looks like it has been screwed on, perhaps drawn from a big basket of replaceable hands sold separately for different needs. This one is clearly the kung fu grip attachment. Though absurdly small, and as soft and pink as an uncooked cube of chicken breast, it never relinquishes its vice-like grip, and turns my finger white as I raise her up to a standing position.
Her legs wobble slightly before her knees click straight, like a tape measure snapping into place. Still holding tight, she takes one step, then two, but as I try to let go, she bumps to the ground for the 100th time today. As tears erupt, our attempts at comfort fall on deaf ears. Luckily, Charlie is on hand to push past us and take control, offering the one salve that stops her crying for good: a big, loving headbutt that soon has her smiling again.
Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? by Séamas O’Reilly is out now (Little, Brown, £16.99). Buy a copy from guardianbookshop at £14.78
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