Disk 9 · c. 2006 · age 22
The Ball Pond
I had a daughter in 2005. By 2006 she could sit up, hold a ball and look at it, and that was most of her act. So I bought a pirate ship.
I had a huge inflatable pirate ship set up in the living room. It came flat, with a foot pump, and it took a good while of wheezing before it stood up on its own with its mast in the air and a friendly skull and crossbones on top.
Then the balls went in. Hundreds of them, in five colours, tipped over the side out of an enormous net bag. She said "Ba". I decided that meant ball.
We both sat in it all day.
I would play Viva Piñata while we sat in there, because babies don't do very much. You made a garden, and if you made it nice enough, things came to live in it. She held a ball. Then she held the ball some more. Every so often she looked at me, and then back at the ball.
The light went round the room without us. Lunch was a bottle for her and a biscuit for me, one-handed. By teatime the garden was full, and neither of us had done very much at all.
Then she held her ball out to me, the one she'd been looking at since the morning. I took it. Fair's fair.
I love being in the ball pond with her, even though babies are boring. Boring is the wrong word, really. Nothing happened all day, and I've never forgotten it.
