We'll always have Timonium

Cleo, wherever you are when you read this,if you read this - in printed form, perhaps, in an attic, as part of some distant spring cleaning; or online, through the potent search engine of some university library where you're supposed to be writing a junior high essay on John Stuart Mill - wherever you are, I want you to know that on this day, the last day of August, 2010, you were deeply loved by both your mother and your father.

There are many, many things that we enjoy and admire about you: your devil-may-care daring in approaching, and scaling, rocking chairs; the way in which you open your mouth so wide, when we extend a spoonful of hummus; your adorable and flexible collection of four tiny words (woof, hi, uh-oh, and duck). The way you extend your arms towards your crib, near the end of every evening's bedtime liturgy, as if to embrace sleep, and the way in which, when I asked you today where the pool was, as we played in the sandbox, you turned, and pointed straight towards the pool. As if every one-year-old knows that. And perhaps they do: but 39-year-old forget that you do, and we thus feel compelled to write it down, to remember.

But what I really wanted to say, Cleo, was simply thanks for today's 9-hour-date. Date? Really? Well, maybe that's not quite the word - and if it is the word, then I'm a poor date, for I do almost all of the talking. (Although, I should point out, I do foot the bill for everything, too; you've never once offered to pay). But, whatever you call it, on days like today we head out together, and see what this old city can offer us, from bread bowls of black bean soup to the Science Center's water guns. Or, on this 96-degree Tuesday, a visit to the State Fair, in Timonium, where you saw your first llama, spent about 10 minutes watching milk goats being judged, pointed vigorously to the largest, fastest rides on Midway, as though you'd simply take your seat on the roller coaster, and peered long and hard at the ducklings, which we'd seen in books but never in person. And damn if they aren't, some of them, yellow.

But the high point for me, it turned out, was simply taking the light rail there and back. I don't think you'd ever been on a train before, and watching your initial fear - you cried, I'll admit, for a minute or two - melt into something like a cool, studied comfort was wonderful. The trees passed in a green swath; houses looked like toys. We saw fields, a part of a forest, and a lake, and as we sat together you drew cold water from a sippy cup.

So much of your mother's life, and mine, has been in motion, across boundaries, in trains, and buses, and planes. We love the thought that we can share that with you, and that you, a city girl, will pet goats in the county, or watch tiny ducklings hatched from their static pages, before you.