It should’ve been California!

Marcel read her first word, last week. Ironically, it came while watching television. At Steve’s, of Blue’s Clues’, urging, Marcel read the word “moon.”

After that, I don’t think there’s really anything more to say. Except, maybe…

WOOOOOOOOOOO-HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’ve been washing Marcel’s hair from the beginning. That task was so difficult, and would leave me so exhausted, that I needed my wife to tag in to do the styling.

I needed her to tag in because of that fact and the additional fact that I didn’t know the first thing about styling. There was one other reason, too. Maybe my wife won’t admit it, but I have the strong sense that she wanted to be the one who styled Marcel’s hair.

I’m not sure how it is in other communities, but in black communities, hair is a big issue. And the ability to control and manipulate hair into a thing of beauty is a–not “the” but “a”–measure of a woman’s worth in the black community.

Now, this is loaded.

First, we have to acknowledge that, historically, white hair styles had set the standard of beauty, even though whites have a very different type of hair than blacks. This, in turn, required blacks to develop extreme, even unhealthy, measures to force black hair into white styles. Thus, black women found beauty in something usually alien to our community (white hair), but also found beauty in something uniquely ours (black hair care methods).

However, if you have one (white hair), you really don’t have the opportunity to develop the other (black hair care methods) and, on the other hand, if you have to rely on the latter, you probably can never claim the former (at least, not comfortably). Thus develops one of the most significant fault lines in the black female community.

My white-haired, black wife is well aware of all this and, because Marcel has black hair, I believe my wife feared that this fault line might develop between she and Marcel while also revealing that fault line between her and the other black hair women in our family who could, frankly, see that Marcel had the type of black hair that could easily come as close to white hair as black hair could come.

On the other hand, if my wife could show, through Marcel, that she could master black hair methods, then she would build her bond with her black-haired relatives. Most importantly, though, by teaching Marcel how to manage these treacherous waters, I think my wife felt that she could help build her bond with her own daughter.

But I want to build a bond with my daughters, too.

Marcel, again frankly, is girlie. Tristan, who already shows that she’s more interested in her big sister than any other member of our family, will probably be girlie, too. If I am going to bond with my daughters, then it’s going to have to be on their turf. That means dancing lessons, and princess training and…hair styling. So, while I was grateful for the help, I was also disappointed that I couldn’t finish the job.

Well, I know how to finish it, now.

Behold my first hair do.

When my friend Erica, originally from Florida, came through our front door, Marcel stopped. This isn’t unusual. Marcel is a warm person but often is wary during the initial meeting with strangers or people she doesn’t see very often. In this case, she had only met F.E. once before. But, oh, what a meeting!

Like this time, F.E. had then come to stay with us while she was in town on business. Staying with us was more convenient for her to make her early morning meetings, but it also gave us an opportunity to catch up on each other’s lives as well as reminisce. We did do that, but it also turned into an extravagant exploration for Marcel.

More specifically, she got into F.E.’s purse.

My wife wears little make-up. My wife’s sister, the person outside our home that Marcel sees the most, wears little make-up. My mother wears little make-up. And, I thought, F.E. wore little make-up. Yet, she had a stash of make-up…In her purse…And Marcel found it!

Frankly, I was aghast the first time Marcel got her hands inside F.E.’s purse. F.E., though, was non-plussed. That’s not to say that she just let Marcel rifle through it. Instead, as we continued our conversation, she gracefully managed every step of the process. So gracefully that, eventually, I forgot that Marcel was playing with make-up, at all.

Marcel didn’t forget, though. It made such an impact that the very first thing that she did when she woke up the next morning was touch her lips and say, “More.” That’s how she asked for more lipstick.

So, when Marcel hesitated as F.E. entered our home and gave her a warm hello, I was a bit disappointed. Embarrassed, even.

Marcel, however, didn’t hesitate because she was wary. Apparently, she was hesitating because she couldn’t believe her good fortune. Then, she accepted it.

And, then, she ran into F.E.’s welcoming arms.

Now that Tristan’s tiny self is here, we can really see how much Marcel has grown since she was an infant. Despite this growth, however, there are some aspects of infancy that Marcel is not quite ready to let go.

For instance, though Marcel was quick to adopt utensils, she still loves to be spoon fed. She requests it with her morning yogurt like other people would ask for granola or fruit. And, frankly, sometimes it’s the only way to get her to eat her dinner.

Another example can be found in her relationship with the stairs. I notice other children push their parents away when it’s time to climb stairs. Those children relish showing off this form of independence. Not Marcel, though. In fact, she gets indignant if I hold out one hand to help her with the stairs, instead of reaching out with two to pick her up and carry her.

The worst example, however, is the pacifier. For over a year, we tried to ween Marcel off pacifiers because day care prohibits them and her teeth we’re getting a little bucked. We started small.

First, we only denied her during day care hours. That meant she could work the hell out of her pacifier until we pulled her out of the car in the day care parking lot and that that pacifier was waiting for her in her car seat when we picked her up.

Then, we started to deny her the pacifier as soon as she left the house in the morning and hoped to expand it further until there was no time for pacifiers, at all. Moreover, all through this progression of denial, we constantly peppered her with exhortations and challenges to withdraw from pacifier reliance. We pulled out everything from “You don’t need a pacifier!” to “Pacifiers are for babies!”

Ultimately, though, the only thing that got the pacifier out of Marcel’s mouth, was the fact that we ran out of them. (If we didn’t lose them, then she chewed them up.)

Unfortunately, this doesn’t run them out of mind. One particularly funny moment–or heartbreaking if your Marcel–came after a particularly tough day. By this time, we had gone months without a pacifier. It had been so long that I had forgotten about their power. Instead, on this day, I only remembered our recent tools of comfort and succor.

The problems started when we discovered that the corner store had run out of Marcel’s favorite snack. The next problem came when we didn’t find her neighbor and best friend, Ciglali, playing in front of the house. Worse, neither cousins Nilo nor Eva could be found and my wife, unusually, would not be home for hours. Eventually, Marcel began to whimper incessantly. Finally, Marcel just dropped her head into her eyes and wailed, “I want my pasie!” I had to chuckle at that but ended up holding her in my arms until her mother came home.

With episodes like that, I flinched a little when my wife suggested it was time to get Tristan some pacifiers. I had hoped that we would never have to bring another pacifier into the house. Not only could we avoid backward steps with Marcel that way, but we could avoid the problem with Tristan, altogether. My wife, tired of being a human pacifier after only two weeks however, insisted. So I sat Marcel down for a little chat.

I wanted to explain that Tristan needed a pacifier. That Tristan needed a pacifier because she was a baby but that big girls, like her, never needed pacifiers. I tried to explain to Marcel that she would be the perfect person to pick out a pacifier for Tristan, though, because Tristan was just a baby and knew nothing about pacifiers but she knew all about them.

That’s what I tried to explain. What Marcel heard was “Blah, blah, blah, PASIE! Blah, blah, blah, PASIE! Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, PASIE, blah, blah, blah, PASIE!” I knew this because every time that I said the word “pacifier”, her eyes got big and she excitedly asked “HUH?!?”

Nonetheless, we piled into the car and headed for the drugstore. It was in the car that I realized that our little talk was a failure because, in the car, Marcel started talking about her pasie. So I tried to reiterate my point.

“We’re not going to get a pasie for you, Marcel. We’re going to get a pasie for Tristan. It’s Tristan’s pasie, not yours.” That’s when she reiterated her point.

“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

I called my wife from the car to change her position, but she was firm. According to her, she and Tristan needed Tristan to have a pacifier. So I kept going to the drugstore. When we got to the drugstore, amazingly, there were stickers immediately inside the store, right at Marcel’s eye level.

I didn’t even notice them on my way to the pacifiers, but they were the first thing Marcel saw and she grabbed some as she trotted behind me. More favor came in the form of sippy cups–the brand she uses and more–which were hanging right next to the pacifiers in the drug store. In these stickers and in these sippy cups, I had bargaining chips and Marcel fell for it.

“What do you want Marcel, stickers and sippy cups or pasies?”, I asked.

“Stickers!,” she replied and, being no fool, she added, “and sippy cups!”

With that, we grabbed our booty, paid for it and headed home. At home, somehow Marcel got that bag and started rifling through it. She showed her stickers to her grandparents and marveled at her sippy cups. Then, she noticed the pacifiers. My wife must’ve opened up the pack because one was loose. She grabbed it but stopped when she spied me spying her.

“What are you doing Marcel?,” I queried.

“Testing it for Sister.”

With that, she popped the pacifier into her mouth and ran away.