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4j i/touwuiyi
my little girl
She travels in
a magic world of her
own imagination,
of cowboys and cookies
and distant lagoons —
and sometimes,
because she loves me,
she takes me along.
■ My little girl is growing up. and the other morning
she acquainted me with that fact. She was standing before
me as I explained to her why she mustn't do a certain thing. As on
previous occasions, I talked to her without condescension, yet
tried to bring the subject down to her level of reasoning. When I had
finished she looked at me quietly, then smiled a gentle smile.
"Mommy," she said, "I'm not. a baby any more. I'm six years old."
And it struck me suddenly how far she'd come since the days when she reached out her plump baby hands to catch the sunlight as it danced across her play pen. I told myself I must remember from now on to discuss things with her on a plane a little above, rather than beneath her understanding. I could see I'd insulted her for the first time, and the knowledge made me unhappy. . . .
The mind of my little girl has a singular doggedness about it which I try hard to understand. The day I told her we were going to Honolulu, she and Bob and Nana — her nurse — and I, she was consumed by curiosity about this new place. I told her about the white beaches and the cocoanuts and the people with their golden skin and white teeth. She could think of nothing else and spent hours looking for pictures of places in Hawaii, and boats that travel there.
Then Bob and I changed our minds and decided to go to Europe instead. Cheryl was five years old at that time and to her Europe was. of course, a strange and marvelous place. We went to London and Paris and saw all the wonderful things of the Old World, and my little girl digested all that her young eyes could devour. When, after five months, we returned to New York and entered our room in the hotel, she sprawled on the bed and looked at me expectantly. I could see that something was about to burst forth and I asked what^was troubling her.
"Now are we going to Honolulu?" she said.
I couldn't keep from laughing — yet while I laughed, I knew that I had disappointed her and, even more important, had broken a promise to her that she would not forget.
One day months later in Hollywood, I saw her walking away from our house, toward the hills in the (Continued on page 76)
Land's six-year-old daughter. Cheryl, who's getting to be a big girl, proudly reaches up to the mantel of the Topping living room.
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