The Wolf-child Cometh

Eli shows worrying signs of extremism. Having taken her father's thousand hints that princess dresses are unwelcomed and princesses themselves unloved, she has embraced a new favored persona: Mowgli. Her Mowgli outfit has all the virtue of simplicity, consisting only of a diaper. And with the fall winds tossing and the autumnal chill descending, near-nudity could hardly be more in season.

Eli was in Mowgli mode when I came home for lunch today. Julia, on the other hand, was nowhere to be seen. I finally found Julia in my own bedroom, alone, rolling and unrolling a tape measure. "What are you doing?" I inquired. "Oh," she shrugged with studied insouciance, "I'm just pretending that this is a house." "This" apparently referred to the master bedroom. I was invited to come in and pretend too.

This was exciting, but the cup of excitement ran over when there was a knock on the door and in bounded Mowgli herself. Eli bellowed assorted incoherences and began to dance, forward and backward, to and fro.

Now the master bedroom is more comfortable than capacious, and Eli had a hundred opportunities to trip and fall. These she made the most of, catching the corner of the bed on one of her backsteps. Her fall was momentous, but with the prodigious abdominal muscles of a two-year-old she arrested her head's descent before it struck the floor. With all the tenderness of paternal solicitation I asked if she was all right. She bounded up with wondrous celerity. "I'm okay Balloo!" she cried. "I'm okay! I'm okay!" (When Eli is Mowgli, you see, I am Balloo; Julia Shere-Kahn; and Lia the she-wolf whose name I can't recall).

Disaster averted, Eli danced anew. Probably not seven seconds elapsed before she slipped on the bed skirts and greeted the floor once more. "Eli," I suggested helpfully, "why don't you run out to the living room and show Nin how to dance." She looked at me steadily in the face without expression, then, silently acknowledging this to be the best idea yet conceived by a mortal, she trotted noisily away.

Anon, she arrived in the living room, where Nin sat reading The Economist (the reader will pause to observe how we confer culture even on guests from the most far-flung reaches of civilization). Eli strutted and fretted and pirouetted until satisfied of Nin's attention and awe. Nin thought she was merely modeling a fresh, clean diaper (I had changed her minutes before). No, Nin, thou unapprehending Philistine. For those with eyes to see, this was the immortal dance of the fabled wolf child.