She is two-and-a-half years old and very, very pretty with huge, blue eyes, fabulous dimples and very blonde hair. Her name is Emily, and her mommy asked me and Chris, a dear friend of mine, to take care of her for the day. Chris arrived at 6:30 a.m. as Emily's mommy was taking Emily's daddy to have an operation. Chris looked exhausted when relief arrived in the form of me at 9 a.m., for she had been down on the ground woofing, playing the wind, the monster, the clouds, and the doctor.
We decide to take perfect Emily, who was in no way exhausted, to visit seven Labrador puppies who are five weeks old. Well, we forgot. You need to bring the portable potty, extra clothes, bottles, toys, car seat. It took us about twenty minutes to get underway. Of course, the need to go pee-pee occurs the minute we start off. We stop, grateful there are two of us to handle one tiny thirty-pound girl. Naturally, there's a change of mind and potty is put back in the car empty. We start off again.
Arriving at the puppies' house, we disembark. Emily's toy stuffed animals join us as we march into the house. The puppies adore Emily. She's their size. They bound all over her, licking, sniffing, nipping. Nipping does not go down well, so we traipse over to see the miniature horse, who is a great success. But Emily, who has been up since 6 a.m., realizes it is lunchtime. This entails putting everything back into the car and heading to her house.
I have polished my fingernails in different colors. The thumb is purple, forefinger blue, followed by yellow, pink ring finger and green pinky. This is to enchant Emily as I cut up her turkey, too small do I cut the pieces, but she graciously eats them anyway.
Now Chris and I know it's naptime, pray it's naptime, but first we need to get down and play mommy and daddy and baby puppies. We can hardly stand and when we totter up, Emily needs spotted dog, who's been left in the car. Out we go and now we can play car. This means pretending eighty-eight times we are going very fast to the grocery store. This means we jump up and down and jiggle. Somehow during this, Emily manages to put all the coins into the seat belt lock which means we spend a half an hour getting the coins out. Not all of them because somehow she puts part of the money back in.
How can she still be going? The dimples still dimpling, the eyes bluer than ever? "Emily -- nap time." Looks us straight in the eyes -- "My mommy doesn't like me to take naps." Absolutely perfect. I believe her even though her mommy had told me about her daily naps and stressed their importance. She is so enchanting that we naturally acknowledge her right to stay up. Her mother has entrusted her child to our care, two nearly seventy-year-old women, intelligent mothers ourselves, and we have been undone by two dimples.