The real McCoy

Above, because if you somehow sought out this website you'll likely want to know, that's Cleo with her new friend and occasional playmate Cora. Cora's a sweetie, and has shown an ability to weather the suffocating attention and constant caresses that her visits inspire in Cleo. And that ability, in turn, has endeared her to Cleo, whose attention thus redoubles. It's like a closed circuit of constantly increasing adoration: a 2-year-old greenhouse in which the gases of cuteness and instinctive mothering grow ever more intense.

But while Cleo really likes Cora, she's even more infatuated, in recent days, with the notion of actually being Lisa, the lead singer of Milkshake. You'll remember Milkshake: that's the child-friendly band which plays the occasional local concert and which is fronted by an warm, enthusiastic, talented, and tutu-wearing lead singer named Lisa. For a few days after the show, Cleo asked - always very bashfully - to be called Lisa, and if you were willing to comply you could produce a wave of shy giggles. Now that some time has passed, though, the initial novelty has worn off, and Cleo speaks confidently as if she were, in fact, Lisa, or at least a younger version of Lisa. Today, for instance, as we walked past a pair of parked motorcycles she matter-of-factly announced that "When I was a baby I couldn't ride a motorcycle but when I am a singer I will ride a big motorcycle."

She may; she may not. For the moment, though, her insistence on being addressed as Lisa has definitely increased the level of confusion in our home. For not only does the daughter want to emulate the singer, she has also appropriated her mother's name - leading to scenes like one, the other evening, where I casually asked L. if she wanted a beer - only to hear a small voice respond, "Which Lisa?" At the same time, too, Cleo has thus staked out a private level of association with classics such as Corduroy, in which the girl who takes home the curious teddy is named... Lisa. Suddenly, in other words, I'm surrounded by Lisas, and reading a simple children's book can become a deeply fluid exercise in identity exchange.

But so be it. The rewards of the (temporary? After all, for a time she also wanted to be called Joe, after her favorite Blue's Clues character...) name change are significant. Shortly after passing by the motorcycles, we walked into a grocery store. As we were paying for our lunch, Cleo snared the receipt, said, "This is my microphone," and began to sing softly. The checkout woman heard her, laughed, and offered a brief sung verse of her own: "I love you," she lilted, "and you love me."

It was a sweet effort - in fact, the woman could never have known that it bore a close resemblance to Cleo's very favorite Milkshake song ("I love you; I love you; I don't know much; But this much is true."). But only, in the end, a resemblance. When I pointed out, outside the store, the coincidence to my little daughter, she answered in the studied tones of a connoisseur. "Yeah," she averred, "but her song only went "I love you" one time."

Songs are only songs, and they can always be modified, abbreviated, reworded, or mashed up. But to their makers, real or pretend, they're also a serious business.