She never was a confident one, even as a baby poor thing.  I’d take her to the park, and all the other toddlers would run, and of course fall on their diapered little behinds, and my stars would they laugh.  Some of them would cry—spoiled little things—but even the spoiled ones would get right back up and keep on running.  She had her chubby little baby hands around the edge of that park bench so tight you’d think she was built in.  Such a face!  It gave my old heart terrible pain to watch her as a baby, looking after the other kids and staying put not two feet from me.

That boyfriend of hers.  Anybody could see she’s thinking wedding bells, or I suppose living together.  Kids these days.  They think they know more than the whole world, like a birth certificate can tell you how much you know.  All of twenty, wet behind the ears, convinced that those highfaluting books he likes are a sure sign he’s the man of her dreams.  

You should’ve seen her though, last weekend when they were over for dinner.  What kind of mother raises a son to bring movies with subtitles when he’s invited somewhere?  I have more than half a mind to grab him by that messy ponytail of his and shake some sense into him.  Could be all that reading is making his eyes bad, I suppose.  Maybe he really doesn’t see how bad she’s got it for him.  They almost suit, except that he gets all engrossed in a book or some arty film or whatever, and she gets that terrible longing face like she had when she was just a sprout in the park.  She’s like one of them foreign orchids.  He oughta be more careful of her.