The Niece

The niece, Dee, is now an adorable tyke of some 18+ months. Redundant statement given all aunts find their nieces adorable.

I have watched her grow in the months since I came back to Sydney and right now she's at that happy stage where she walks (more and more confidently), intersperses her baby talk with many legible words and has a cloud of hair that eventually escapes attempts to keep it neat. If you amuse her, she will reward you with a low gurgling laugh and you find yourself surprised at the happiness induced by it. She has her moments of annoyance, at other points she demonstrates a remarkable patience with the constant babble of the adults around her. Like any toddler these days, she is used to the camera and poses and pirouettes with ease. She also knows that everything she does is subject to admiration, increasingly a lot of things she does is thrown out with an awareness of being secure in an audience.

She is a happy child. Being the first child/grandchild, her upbringing has involved a lot of people and everyone has brought both love and conscientiousness to raising her. As a result of having people around her, she's also spoken to in three languages and we marvel at her ease with all. My cousin is considerably younger than me and was an adorable tyke too and it sometimes catches me by surprise that she is now a mother.

One thing has remained unchanged with the niece. Her face has always held a calm and sweet expression (though her father finds the days of constant calm and sweetness long gone!). That still sweetness always reminds me of the lines from the Frank Marshall Davis poem, Flowers of Darkness:

I see the flowing night
Cameo condensed
Into the lone black rose
Of your face