This transformation is anything but holy ~ October 16, 1986

by David Heiller

The Transformation began about two months ago. This Transformation has a capital T, but it is anything but holy. Diabolical might be a better description.

I was attempting to put a 10-foot piece of roll roofing onto the garden shed, in a pretty stiff breeze. With my carpentry and coordination, that is a two person job. There were two, of us, but one was my daughter, Malika. Being only 14 months old, she didn’t count.

Not much scared Malika.

I rode that roll roofing like a magic carpet a top the garden shed, trying to keep an eye on Mollie, who was playing on the swing-set. As I put one nail in place, the wind lifted the other end out of place. I turned around to nail it straight, glancing toward the swing-set for the kid. She was gone. That didn’t worry me, since the only real danger at our house is the county road at the end of the driveway, and I had a clear view of that. So I concentrated on the rolling roof.

As I nailed it into place, I glanced at the ladder onto the eight-foot-high roof. A movement caught my eye. Malika’s head rose above the edge of the roof, smiling like some proud sun. Then she froze. She was at the top rung, unable to advance. She looked down, then back at me with the dumb realization that she was stuck.

I had the same dumb look in my eyes. I couldn’t get down the ladder—only room for one there. I couldn’t lift her up—too steep. I leaped off the roof into tall grass, then came up behind Malika. She was now crying quite freely. The sun had changed to showers in a hurry. I lifted her off the ladder, and we both breathed a big sigh.

That was the Transformation, the start of it. I returned to the roof, and she followed me back up the ladder. We repeated the process, her beaming smile, then sudden fear, my leap to the ground and rescue. This happened three times before I conceded defeat and let the roof keep leaking.

When my wife came home, I told her light-heartedly what that darn Malika had done.

“You were doing what?” she asked. “She did what? You let her climb what? What if she had fallen? Is your roof that important?”

These were all questions I had been avoiding.

“But Mollie wouldn’t stay off the ladder,” I protested. “She’s got a mind of her own now, I tell you. She just kept coming up that ladder. I couldn’t stop her.”

The best way to deal with Malika was some kind of containment plan. A kid-pack worked great!

“Hmmmm,” Cindy said, unpersuaded.

Cindy is still unpersuaded about the ladder incident, but Mollie took the adventure as her cue to enter the real world of childhood independence. All moms and dads who have trod this rugged stretch of parenthood know of which I speak. It’s that time when letters to relatives stop describing the kid innocuously: “And little Joey is such a good baby, always smiling, real easy, not a trouble-maker.”

The letters change to something like this: “Little Joey is sure a little bug. He is always on the go, and likes to keep us hopping.”

If you read between the lines, they are actually saying, “The little so-and-so is a one-baby SWAT team. He makes Rambo look like Liberace. He’s destroying the house and us with it.”

At least that is the way it is at our house, during this Transformation. You do not turn your back on Malika. She has mastered the ascent of every piece of furniture under five feet. That ladder was small potatoes. She stands on the window sill, she sits on the kitchen range. She climbs the stool next to the counter and climbs up to reach the good cupboards. Not the unlocked ones at floor level with boring Tupperware, but the good ones, with the china we never use: She uses it. The kitchen table is her own personal turf, and she spends as much time as possible there. We have to spread all the furniture into the middle of the rooms, so that she can only get stranded. Soon she will learn to leap from one to the other.

Malika love. Everyone needs hugs.

Climbing isn’t the end. She pours milk out of pitchers, onto the table and floor. She pulls pitchers of juice off the counter, down her shirt. Any spare items that fall on the floors, she claims until they tire her, then she throws them into the wood box.

Maybe it is coming to a head though. On Saturday, she stayed in the house with Cindy while I performed the great American autumn ritual of putting on storm windows, I figured if Mollie were outside, she would be at the top, of the 20-foot ladder. I figured if she stayed in the house, we’d all be safe.

I figured wrong.When I’d finished the ladder work, I grabbed the piece of glass for the combination picture window in our living room, and went to put it in. I set it down in the living room, against the stereo, while I took the screen out. As I walked into the kitchen with it, a tremendous crash sounded behind me. Cindy and I jumped and ran into the living room. Mollie stood in the middle of about 200 splinters of glass. She had knocked the window over onto her rocking chair. She wasn’t cut, luckily. She just stood there, looking at us calmly. She didn’t start to cry till we very gently picked her up and deposited her safely in the kitchen. Or as safely as any room can be with her in it.

As I headed to work Monday morning, Mollie followed this fine feat by pulling the lamp off the table, again in the living room, breaking the bulb into another 200 pieces of glass. Cindy and I just looked at each other. I guess we are used to this Transformation. But we can’t wait till the next stage. It’s got to be better than this one.