"Judith Merril - That Only A Mother" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merril Judith)

July 10
Believe it or not, as you like, but your daughter can talk, and I don't mean baby
talk. Alice discovered itтАФ she's a dental assistant in the WACs, you knowтАФand
when she heard the baby giving out what I thought was a string of gibberish, she
said the kid knew words and sentences, but couldn't say them clearly because she
has no teeth yet. I'm taking her to a speech specialist.


September 13
We have a prodigy for real! Now that all her front teeth are in, her speech is
perfectly clear andтАФa new talent nowтАФshe can sing! I mean really carry a tune! At
seven months! Darling, my world would be perfect if you could only get home.


November 19
At last. The little goon was so busy being clever, it took her all this time to learn
to crawl. The doctor says development in these cases is always erraticтАж
SPECIAL SERVICE TELEGRAM
December 1, 1953
08:47 LKS9F
From: Tech. Lieut. H. Marvell X47-016 GCNY
To: Mrs. H. Marvell
Apt. K-l7
504 E. 19 St., N;Y. N.Y.
LEAVE STARTS TOMORROW WEEK'S STOP WILL ARRIVE
AIRPORT TEN OH FIVE STOP DON'T MEET ME STOP LOVE LOVE
LOVE HANK
 Margaret let the water run out of the bathinette until only a few inches were left,
and then loosed her hold on the wriggling baby.
"I think it was better when you were retarded, young woman," she informed her
daughter happily. "You can't crawl in a bathinette, you know."
"Then why can't I go in the bathtub?" Margaret was used to her child's
volubility by now, but every now and then it caught her unawares. She swooped
the resistant mass of pink flesh into a towel, and began to rub.
"Because you're too little, and your head is very soft, and bathtubs are very
hard."
"Oh. Then when can I go in the bathtub?"
"When the outside of your head is as hard as the inside, brainchild." She
reached toward a pile of fresh clothing. "I cannot understand," she added, pinning
a square of cloth through the nightgown, "why a child of your intelligence can't
learn to keep a diaper on the way other babies do. They've been used for centuries,
you know, with perfectly satisfactory results."
The child disdained to reply; she had heard it too often.
She waited patiently until she had been tucked, clean and sweet-smelling, into a
white-painted crib. Then she favored her mother with a smile that inevitably made
Margaret think of the first golden edge of the sun bursting into a rosy pre-dawn.
She remembered Hank's reaction to the color pictures of his beautiful daughter,
and with the thought, realized how late it was.