"We're like brother and sister"

"Except you're older."

We were lying in her bed tonight. She had wanted me to sleep with her because she said she was still afraid. Why, I had asked. I have bad dreams, she explained. About what, I had wanted to know. Ghosts, she said.

"What makes us brother and sister?" I asked. This isn't the first time she's used the brother-sister analogy in recent days.

"We look alike," she said. We both have fat cheeks. "And we're always happy."

It's true that we have fun together. Especially with Cocoa, lately. We walk her on the street up the hill from us, although she mostly runs. When we come down the hill, we put her on her leash, and I usually run with her. Maia thinks the sight of me running with Cocoa is hysterical.

Yesterday, on the way up the hill, Cocoa had picked up a bottle top near a trash can. Maia had taken it out of Cocoa's mouth and had then been horrified to discover some kind of black residue on her finger.

"Poop!" she had cried, "Poop!" She panicked when she couldn't shake it loose. "It can't be poop, Maia," I said. "Get it off!" she had cried. "Wipe it on my pants," I said. I was wearing Levi's. She did, but then sniffed her finger. "It's still on my finger," she said, starting to cry. I had her wipe her finger on my Levi's again until she calmed down a little.

We both looked at a black clump on my Levi's. I tried to knock it off, but it got stuck to my finger instead. I shook my hand, but I couldn't shake the black stuff loose, which made Maia laugh. I finally wiped it off on the side of the trash can, and then I sniffed my finger, too.

"It does smell like, poop!" I said, trying to get the traces of it off my finger. "Poop! I told you," Maia said, laughing at me. "Let's go back," I said, and we headed back down the hill at a run with Cocoa, my wild running causing Maia to laugh somemore.

That was the sort of thing that was thinking of when she said we're always happy.

"Like iCarly," she said.

"Oh, you mean like Carly and her brother."

"Yes," she said.

A couple of weeks ago, we were on our way back from having dinner with a friend who had adopted a child from China.

"When they saw me in the orphanage," Maia asked, "did they want to take me?"

"They didn't see you," Kristina had said.

I don't know how to talk about that part of it. So I usually don't.

John, Tuesday, September 29, 2010