Little and Big

Mabel Watson Payne showed a little boy in a brown velour track suit how to spin the steel rollers on the bottom of the toddler slide at Huntington Park on Friday afternoon as the bright afternoon clouded over. She happened to be wearing the fleece-lined pink corduroy jacket I gave her in August 2011 for her first birthday. I bought it in size 12-18 months. She somewhat swam in this garment, I remember, when it was new. Now Mabel is 26 months old and I was actually a bit surprised to find the jacket still surviving in her wardrobe. A bit short in the sleeves these days, but it still more-or-less fits. And remains a particularly agreeable shade of pink, in my view, set off by big blue buttons.

Up until recently, Mabel was always the one in the role of little child looking up to bigger children with open admiration, attempting to imitate advanced accomplishments like high-speed roller-rolling. Now that she is turning into one of those bigger kids herself, Mabel displays the same calm indifference to baby-admiration that the big kids of her own babyhood usually manifested.