Anna makes progress

It is true that Anna is always making progress of one sort or another, always at her own pace, and sometimes I think that time-lapse photography might be the best way to capture her development. My little flower opens slowly, but beautifully.

And then there are the days where all the imperceptible movements suddenly add up to a giant leap. Months and months of scribbling, writing triangle-shaped 'letters' and squiggles that look like someone's drawn a lawn set for croquet, take shape. Anna can write her name. Slowly, the triangles become the letter A, written over and over on sheet after sheet of paper. The funny half-hoops look more and more like lowercase n's. Hey, presto: that says, 'Anna'.

So last Thursday, Anna was going to a birthday party, her first since moving to England. Her friend Ebony was very keen to have Anna; my apologies were most insistently rejected. I had to juggle a ridiculously busy afternoon in order to get Anna to the party. I bought the present and card, the obligatory pink wrapping paper, and we were all set. I wrote, 'Happy Birthday, Ebony, with love from' inside the card. I showed it to Anna, read out the message, and said, 'now you write your name here'. Anna looked distinctly uninterested. No use urging or pleading when she's not interested, so I set the card and pen on the table and told Anna it would be there for her to write her name. I knew my chances were no better than 50/50. Following such a specific direction seems to be against Anna's personal code of ethics most days.

Maybe ten minutes later, she appeared in the kitchen with the card. Just below 'with love from', she had written, 'Anna'. Just 'Anna'--no extraneous scribbles, no half-formed letters, not on the wrong side of the card. Anna.

Just four letters--really just two. Is it such a big deal? Around here it most certainly is.