An amour fou

I know it used to hurt my mom's feelings--or tickle her sense of injustice--when I used to tell everyone about how Dad read Pride & Prejudice out loud by the light of oil lamps one summer in Maine and changed my life, as if no one had ever read to me before, or when I would sing along with Ella Fitzgerald to Cole Porter's My Heart Belongs to Daddy.

Now I have an inkling how she felt.

At 2 1/2, Henry is besotted with Peter. The other day as we walked home from the store, his conversation the whole time was nothing but a love poem to his father. "There's Daddy's brown car," he said wistfully. "And there's Daddy's blue car, and Daddy's red car. Maybe Daddy's driving down the street in a big dump truck."

 We passed a house three or four blocks from ours. "That's your house, Mama," he said.

"Is that where I live?" I asked. "Don't I live with you?"

"No, Henry lives with Daddy in our house."

A pause ensued. "I loooove Daddy."

Another thoughtful pause. "Daddy's sump'n, Daddy's really sump'n."