Traces

Everywhere I look these days, I seem to find traces: residues, consequences, and manifestations of earlier actions or decisions. Yesterday Michelle Obama passed through Cape Town, displacing much of the entire university population in the process: her extensive security team arrived at the school several days early, abruptly announced that the dining hall would be shut down for three entire days, and began to erect curtains and to shut off highway entrances. The traces of power, I guess: the arrival of an emperor, or his wife, sends large ripples through any pool. But after breezing through campus, Obama then visited the District Six museum, a handsome little structure that's dedicated to one of the most visible scars of the apartheid years: an entire zone of the city, demolished between 1966 and 1982 in a violent effort to displace colored and black residents and to whiten, or sanitize, the city center. The museum itself occupies a building on the edge of downtown; the area that it commemorates it still, thirty years later, largely empty and undeveloped. The traces of fear and racism.

Traces aren't always sinister, of course. A few days ago, when the sun was more than a distant memory, Cleo and I drove straight into the late afternoon glare, and she sneezed abruptly - and then said, distinctly, "sun sneeze." It's not a term L. or I ever use, but her nanny Jenn had often referred to sneezes occasioned by sunlight, and so here, thousands of miles away, I saw a trace of the time Cleo spent with her nanny.

That's simply cute, I suppose, but we're realizing that we do have to be on guard, too, because in ToddlerLand a momentary gesture, or concession, can become a Major Precedent. Decisions can leave traces, in other words. And so last night, when Cleo woke up with a runny nose at midnight and decided that she wanted to listen to stories for the rest of the evening, we had a decision to make. Four stories, five stories: okay. And, yes, I'll lie down beside you for a few minutes, in the hopes that you'll find your way back into sleep. But, no, you can't share our bed. And, no, I won't read all night. Not because we don't want to, or can't, a single time - but because once will mean twice, and then become a pattern. And so at 1:07 we said our goodnights and firmly shut Cleo in her bedroom -bringing on a firestorm of a tantrum that lasted exactly forty minutes and then finally ended with her lying down on her own, and sleeping for another four hours.

What's right? What's wrong? Should a traveling First Lady be able to inconvenience so many while remaining so remote, even as she nominally tries to help the local population? When does a toddler's parent say No, and when does she give in? I don't know. But I do know that when Cleo awoke we were all the better rested for our decision to shut the door, and she bore no visible ill will. In fact, we had the liveliest, happiest morning of play we've had in several days.