Jane and Henry
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By Kim Chi-young
My daughter is two, and she already has a best friend. When she began to say intelligible words, one of the first to jump out of her mouth was her friend’s name. I’ll call her Jane. When we ask her, "Who’s your best friend?” she says with a smile, “Jane!” But we get the same response when we ask, “What’s your name?”
For a while, we weren’t sure who Jane was, or whether she was even real. We thought she might be referring to a toy or just gibberish. But when we asked our daycare provider, she confirmed that our daughter’s best friend was, indeed, Jane. According to the care provider, they hug in greeting and have pretend tea parties. In the morning, to entice her to get her jacket on and out of the house, I ask, “Who will you play with at daycare?” prompting her to trumpet, “Jane!” and run to the front door. Family members like to ask our daughter random questions, just so they can hear her shout, “Jane!”
During this, my sister-in-law mentioned she had a colleague whose daughter was named Jane, but we all thought it unlikely that the same Jane was our daughter’s friend. After all, we live in a sprawling city, and the daycare provider only watches six kids. What were the odds?
It turned out the odds were great ― Jane is indeed the child of my sister-in-law’s colleague. We ended up connecting and having a play date; the kids were beyond excited, and they doled out lots of hugs and played nicely for the most part. When we had to leave, both girls threw massive tantrums. For an entire week after that, my daughter kept pointing to the door, saying hopefully, “Jane’s house?”
Oddly, when we bump into Jane and her parents in the neighborhood, especially the Sunday Farmers Market, my daughter just stares at Jane as if she doesn’t recognize her. Only after we start coming home will she look up at me from her stroller and say, “Jane?”
For my daughter’s birthday, we had a simple party at home with family and friends. Jane was the only other toddler we invited, and when she and her parents came in, I could see my daughter’s eyes bulge in shock and delight. They embraced each other in greeting, played with an oversized tennis ball, tromped around singing “Ring around the Rosie,” fought over each other’s sunglasses and ran up and down the back steps. They seemed to somehow communicate to each other in toddlerese (grunts and gibberish interspersed with actual words), and there were only minor struggles of “Mine! No, mine!” Cake was enjoyed by all, and another spate of tantrums occurred when it was time for them to leave.
The only glitch in all of this is that Jane will be going to preschool in July. I am already imagining heartbreak, but my daughter might cope with this better than I anticipate. After all, she’s already experienced partings and handled them with grace.
Until a few months ago, there was a three or four-year-old boy at daycare. I’ll call him Henry. My daughter worshipped the ground he walked on. Henry was the second name she uttered after Jane’s. All she talked about was Henry and Jane, Jane and Henry. Eventually, when he left, it didn’t faze her at all. We didn’t even find out that Henry was gone until she came home with a large steering wheel toy. Apparently, on one of his last days, Henry woke up in the morning and told his mom that he wanted to give his favorite toy to my daughter. Puzzled, his mom asked our daycare provider if such a girl was even at the daycare.
When we got home with the steering wheel toy, we asked our daughter if Henry was at daycare anymore. Sometimes she said yes, but most of the time she said, “No Henry. Bye, see you soon!” Months later, my daughter still plays with the toy and says, “It’s Henry’s! Bye, see you soon! It’s mine!”
I am glad my daughter seems to be much more sociable than me. From the stories my family tells, it appears I was a persnickety child who kept to herself. I mostly entertained myself by reading or bossing around my sister. There was also that time I scratched my best friend’s face, leaving deep red gouges, to the horror of all the adults around. Thankfully, my friend didn’t scar.
Here’s hoping that my daughter inherited my husband’s more laid-back genes and doesn’t go around disfiguring other children.
Chi-Young Kim is a literary translator based in Los Angeles. She has translated works by Shin Kyung-sook, Kim Young-ha, and Jo Kyung-ran. Contact her at chiyoung@chiyoungkim.com or via her website, chiyoungkim.com.