Life for a baby is fascinating. Since babies have limited vision at first, things begin to come into focus more and more every day and where there was once a blurry dot against an indigo sky, there is a bird. With Peter, things were also adventurous. Where there was once a little pond in the park, there was a lagoon with mermaids, brightly colored flowers, and a dangerous crocodile, and the willow tree next to the pond was a teepee with Indian warriors chasing after us, trying to capture us (but it was only a game, they always let us go afterwards). Where there was once a chest of toys, there was a pirate ship, with he as captain and I as first mate. I could almost feel the salty sea air and hear the crash of the waves against the ship when we played this game, and I had not once seen the sea. And when I did, a year or so later, it was a disappointment. It paled in comparison to the sea of my and Peter's mind, which somehow seemed... well, a little more than that.
Before he came, I was afraid of everything, but his being fearless and my desire not to be left out of his games changed that. He climbed trees like a circus monkey from a very early age, much to Fanny's despair. She despaired even more when she found that he had taught me to climb them, too. We were quite a handful for one nurse! We escaped from her during outings at the park, and hid from her in the garden among the shrubbery, babbling to each other to remain quiet, lest she heard us. Once she found us, we'd run off in opposite directions, hiding from her again and again.
My mother loved to watch this game. One day she sighed, a little sadly, saying to Fanny:
"My, they grow up so quickly! Before I know it, Peter will be a gentleman and Mary a lady!"
This statement would change my life later, but as I did not even know what a "gentleman" or a "lady" was, Peter and I ignored it at the time. We were, after all, twelve and fourteen months. Our vocabulary was very limited, but in a way, not limited enough.
Peter and I were eating a chocolate cake one day, or rather, Fanny was trying to feed it to us, but we would grab the cake off of the fork and stuff it into each other's faces. We soon grew bored of this game, and so Peter kicked the fork out of our poor nurse's hand, and while she scrambled to get it, said, "Eat your cake!" in a perfect imitation of Fanny's exasperated, scolding voice, shoving another bite into my mouth.
I giggled and did the same to Peter, expecting Fanny to stop us at any time. Instead, a delighted expression came over her face and she rushed out of the room. When she returned, my mother was with her.
"Hear that? What they're saying?" Fanny exclaimed.
"Their first words! How sweet! Though, I'm a bit concerned- they've barely begun to say 'mummy' or 'pappa' yet. Oh well. Thank you for telling me, Fanny. I must get back to tea with Lady Metcalfe."
When my mother left, Peter and I were in stunned silence. We didn't talk until we were put down for our afternoon naps.
"All this time, they've never been able to understand what we've been saying, and now..." Peter drifted off as a new thought entered his mind. "Mary, do you think we're turning into them?"
"Into what?"
"Grown ups!" he cried.
"No!" I said, horrified. "We won't!" But then I remembered my mother's words: I My, they grow up so quickly... /I
I stood proudly on the bow of my pirate ship, scanning the skies and the waters for my enemy, but he was nowhere to be found. Did he retreat back to the island? No, he was no coward... he would not dare do such a thing when he knew I would be searching for him...
"Have at thee, Captain Crook!"
The voice took me by surprise, but I knew who it was at once.
"Peter Pan!" I growled, drawing my sword. "Prepare to meet thy doom!"
Our swords clashed, and though he was a skillful swordsman, I was unafraid. He would be no match for me. Perry, jab, parry, I thrust! /I I lunged at him with my sword, using all of my might, but was disarmed. I fell to the ground, his sword held to my neck.
"The day is mine!" he cried victoriously. And giggled.
I giggled back, as Peter helped me to my feet. We giggled even more when we saw the mess we had made, both of us imagining the expression Fanny would have on her face when she came in to check on us. The nursery was in complete disarray with blankets and sheets hung from our four poster beds to be sails for my pirate ship, the I Jolly Roger /I .
Sure enough, when she walked in about a minute later, she screamed agitatedly and sent us outside, where my mother was relaxing with a book. When we came out, she picked me up in her right arm, Peter in her left, and walked over to a tree where, on a low branch, laid a bird's nest. Two little eggs cozily sat inside. My mother explained that in only a few weeks those eggs would hatch, and out would come baby birds that would turn into bluebirds. We were both baffled- how could a bird fit into something that small? But we would soon find out.
A week or so later, Peter and I had been playing in the garden, sword fighting with sticks, when half of a light blue eggshell fell to the ground. We looked up to the nest above our heads, but though we could hear a few little peeps we could see nothing. Immediately we begged Fanny to lift us up so we could see, but she was tired, and let us into the house to beg my father (mother was calling on a friend). He was at his desk with a quill pen and parchment, scribbling away at who knows what.
"Pappa! Pappa!" I cried, tugging at his coat, "Baby birds!"
"Not now, Mary, dear," he replied in a distracted manner. "I'm very busy."
"Pappa!" Peter demanded his attention.
"Fanny, get these children out of here, I'm working!" Pappa called. "Sorry, sweet ones," he said to us, kissing us each on the head. "I must work now, maybe later."
We were shooed out of the room by our nurse and sent back outside, each of us frustrated at my father's words.
"All he does is work!" Peter grumbled. "He never does anything else. Just work."
"That's what grown-ups do, Peter. I don't suppose he has a choice," I sighed. "You'd think he'd spare just one moment, though. Oh... let's forget all of this now, and just ask mother to show us the birds later."
Peter consented to forget, but I knew he did not, for he did not put as much heart into our game for the rest of the evening.
The next day, my mother and nurse lifted us up to see the two little birds. They were remarkably unsightly, but Peter and I loved them immediately. Mother told us to name them, and Peter went first (picking, of course, the loveliest of the two ugly creatures for himself), naming his Pirate. I was a little less creative than he, and named mine Mary, as I named all of my dolls. We watched these birds as if we were there own parents, digging up worms for their food and leaving them under the nest for their mother to collect. Most of the time, Peter was better at digging up worms than I was, and so therefore took nearly all of the credit for feeding his bird, making it seem as if I had done nothing, but such was Peter's character and I just accepted it as an endearing trait.
Of course, it didn't help when Pirate ended up being the strongest and fastest of the two birds, and the first to fly. No surprise there.
Peter watched my father as closely as he watched his little Pirate. He listened carefully to everything my father talked about-
"He only talks about his work," Peter often said, disgustedly.
-and paid attention to everything my father did-
"Goes to work, comes home, works more at home, and never once does he I play! /I !"
While I tried to explain to Peter that's just all grown-ups did, and my father seemed happy enough, he would never accept that.
"I don't think I ever want to become a grown-up," Peter said one evening as we were crawling into our beds, in a very decided manner. I had long since accepted the fact that we were growing up, whether we liked it or not, and tried to explain my opinions to Peter, but he was very unequivocally against them, and one thing was to come that would seal this opinion of his indefinitely.