Changes

The UK tourist board don’t mention it much, probably through fear of bigger crowds coming and spoiling it, but along the Hadrian’s Wall path there is a magic door that hurtles you many months into the future.

I came home after just one week to find the baby gone and her much older self sitting upright in her place.

The changes are remarkable.

She waits open mouthed for every spoonful of rice of carrot, and will eat it until she bursts. She will enthusiastically lick or gum attack any kind of fruit you care to present.

She sits in her activity chair, head resting on her fat old woman’s arms, jabbering doe eyed, pausing occasionally to give herself a forearm love bite.

She spots something she wants and goes into a zombie-monkey-like trance, chanting an oddly deep ‘Oooooooh, oooooooh, oooooh’, with stiffened arms outstretched, and eyes quadrupling in circumference.

She talks consistently in some undecipherable bah bah nang nang tongue, decorated with intermittent screeches and throwing back of her head.

She cackles, she covers her mouth and nose with the palms of her hands and breathes a Darth Vader line or two, she pulls her own hair, and she grins.

She grins so wide it looks like it hurts. She smiles so broadly her whole appearance is altered.

She laughs so hard it makes me jealous.