Continuum

I close my eyes and listen to my three-year-old daughter's voice. The pitch, the baby lisps, the mistakes she makes. I'm glad I can record bits and pieces and store them on my computer to savour next year when her speech is clearer, or a few decades later when she will be embarrassed by her babytalk.

And then a thought occurs to me. Why don't I record myself speaking? Or my husband or my sister or my parents? Are these voices not precious or worth storing?

But it feels silly. After all, my daughter does not record her own voice, I do. I am her mother, I want to save her voice for memory. Who would want to save mine? I don't ask this out of self-pity but out of curiosity.

When do we pass from childood to adulthood? Is it the day we reach physical maturity? Are we really mature then? One day still a child, the next day a woman?

A child is endearing and interesting to an adult perhaps because of the huge differences between them. A baby cannot walk or talk, but we understand him well enough through his body movements and his facial expressions. We go into raptures at his single-syllable sounds. Another reason could be their dependence on us. This forces us to know them intimately and be tuned to their every little progress.

So does interest slacken as the youngster becomes an adult, once the dependence reduces to a minimum?

How is a sixteen-year-old similar to a thirty-year-old? The teen might think she knows it all and better than her mother for sure, but inside, she craves the parent's attention and love. She may never accept this when said aloud but it's true.

I am still bewildered by the world, but perhaps less so than I was ten, twenty, thirty years ago. You're learning continually--from turning over by yourself, and learning to walk and jump, to facing your peers and the times you live in, making money, working a marriage, learning to be a parent, the list goes on.

Somewhere along this learning slope, we change from the adored child to the responsible adult. It must definitely vary for each person according to his circumstances, but it does make you wonder, doesn't it?