BOGGLED by phone.
Having her is a long lists of firsts. That's what makes it so endlessly interesting, but this one today was a really mind-boggling one for me: it was the first time I heard her voice on the phone.
My synapses sizzled, the electrons danced in both hemispheres. What amazing thing did she say to make me reel down the street like a drunkard at eight in the morning? "Yes, I'm ok, uh,huh, mmmm, bye." Mindblowing, huh? And then, there I was, with a big grin on my face, as if I'd got a call to say I'd won the lottery.
She's the first loved one ever that I've never heard on the phone. Imagine living with an adult for two and a half years and then suddenly hearing them on the phone. I've wished and wished I could talk to her a million times when I've been in meetings and worried how she was doing. I've fantasised about her being able to call me and tell me how she is. I've heard her talk to so many others on the blower, especially my mother, but never to me.
It had been a bit of an emotional morning. We'd had a fight about getting dressed in time to go to her D- her child carer. And then when we got there and I prepared to rush off
suddenly she sobbed great heaving, stomach wracking sobs. D wasn't impressed: " she's having you on, there's no tears. Stop it young lady , you're upsetting your mum." But I was upset myself about having shouted at her, I'd been horrible, had told her I'd leave her behind if she didn't hurry up! Doors had shut firmly. So we both had a little quiet moment on the sofa while D went off and did her hair. But it wasn't a quiet moment, the sobs didn't stop and finally D had to pull her off me.
Ten minutes later, nearing the tube, I got a text saying all was fine, but there was no way I was going to be fobbed off with that: I called. No crying, D as calm as ever - mind you that woman would be calm even if there were a hundred children living in her shoe. And then she passed the phone to X. I strained to listen, over the cars revving down the Liverpool Road, and then I heard her little, grown up voice. She sounded different: more precise, much older. It was if I was hooked into a weird time-travel call from her future and she was talking to me as a teenager.
Then "bye-eee," she said childishly, suddenly bored. And then I knew she really was ok and wasn't going to cry for me all day. Not that she was really crying for me, anyway; she was crying because life at D's isn't so much fun without her best mate E, who's off on her holidays to France. Maybe I should get D to hook them both up on Skype. That would put a just- won- the -lottery smile on her face, no doubt.
