by Jim Lombardo
Brian began. “I’d say it’s been a whirlwind. Our lives have changed so much, and I’m not sure things’ll ever be the same again. I miss the privacy we had, but I have to tell you, it’s been the coolest thing waking up every day to see what’s gonna happen next.”
He looked to Monica and motioned for her to join in.
“Hi, um, well, for me it’s been a rollercoaster of emotions. Having a baby was a miracle, of course. Now, this...this is like a miracle within a miracle. Honestly I can’t even begin to tell you about all the stress and worry since the day our daughter was born.”
She cast a downward glance at Hannah, who was aiming her toothless, gummy smile in her mother’s direction. “But when I look at that face, how can I complain that my life was easier when it was just Brian and me?”
“That’s a sweet thought, Monica,” Andy said. “May I chat with our VIP now?”
The parents nodded.
Andy spoke slowly and clearly, enunciating each word for Hannah’s benefit, though it was entirely unnecessary. “Hannah, can you really talk?”
Hannah thought for a few seconds, then looked down shaking her head.
“Duh.”
“What’s that? You can talk?”
The baby was amused by this question, thinking how could a person ever respond in the negative? Hannah gazed up and was more emphatic this time. “I say, DUHHH.”
“Be nice, Hannah,” Monica whispered.
“Okay, you’re teasing me. So how old are you?”
Hannah didn’t respond, as she was now distracted by the microphone clipped to her dress, which she thought resembled a large water beetle. Andy began to shift uneasily in his seat and inquired again, this time more insistently. “How old are you, sweetheart?”
“Ahhh...I five old,” she obliged, sounding like Andy should already know that.
Monica couldn’t resist lending a helping hand to her baby. “Five months old, right?”
Hannah furrowed her brow and then asked the reporter, “I on TV?”
“Yes, Hannah, you are on TV. Millions of people are watching you right now,” Andy replied. The baby immediately thrust her arms up like she had just thrown the winning touchdown in the Superbowl, though her little flappers barely made it over her head. She then began to preen shamelessly to the camera, rocking forward a few times in a feeble attempt to take a bow.
“So you can talk. Can you say any letters of the alphabet?”
“Yes, I can,” was all she offered.
“You’re teasing me again, I think. Can you tell me some letters you know?”
Hannah nodded and then replied nonchalantly, “D…U...”
Before Andy had a chance to process her subtle dig, she began to chant the alphabet song, “A-B-C-D, E-F-G, H-I-J-K.” She paused and seemed to struggle, “Yellow minnow peas.”
Hannah then thrust a teensy index finger out, pointing at the top of Andy’s head where the studio lights were casting a gleaming shine off a patch of early male pattern baldness.
“What is it, Hannah?” Andy asked.
She stretched her finger out even further, continuing to point.
“What is it?” he repeated.
“All gone bald,” she declared.
Andy chuckled self-consciously and quickly tried to change the subject.
“So, Brian, what’s an average day like in your home?”
“I’d say it’s nuts. Hannah has us going at the crack of dawn. She lets us sleep through the night, but in the morning she’s guns blazing. Thank God for the Discovery Channel or we wouldn’t even be able to eat. We hired a nanny to help out, and my wife’s Aunt Doris has pitched in a lot too, so we’re—”
That triggered an immediate outburst from Hannah. “Aunt Dowis! Ohhh, noooooo!”
Brian stifled a grin, then quickly forged ahead to cut her off. “I’ve also taken some time off from work so I can be home. Usually we spend the whole day just trying to keep her busy with things to learn. The same way babies cry for food, or a new diaper, she’s after us to teach her stuff.”
“What kinds of things is she interested in?”
“Anything, everything. She’s constantly wanting things explained to her. All day long it’s, ‘What this? What’s that? Why, why, why?’ Sometimes I’m thinking I should get back to work just so I can get a break,” he joked.
Monica added, “We’re especially grateful for her best buddies these days, Leah and Sophia who live on the first floor of our duplex, and visit all the time.” She looked into camera while speaking because she knew the twins were watching. “Hannah’s been so enchanted by them. They’re really smart too, and have been playing all sorts of games with her. They’ve even been teaching her about numbers.”
“So you know about numbers, Hannah?” asked Andy.
The baby responded methodically, “1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-8-1-7-4-2-6-5-8-2-2-1-2-3-5-7-11-13.”
“That’s excellent. You just need some work on the end part there.”
Hannah appeared confused as she didn’t understand the reporter’s comment at all.
“So, your mommy and maddy, I’m sorry...mommy and daddy told me you like a lot of things. Can you tell me some of the things you like?”
Hannah grinned widely at Andy and needled him, “You say ‘maddy.’”
“You’re sharp. My bad. So, the things you like?” Andy pressed her.
Hannah raised her eyebrows while she rolled her head and eyes. “Lotta kweshions.”
Andy took the hint and shifted back to Monica. “Just so unbelievable. Tell us, when did you first realize that your daughter was gifted?”
Monica reflected for a few moments, then became introspective. “I’d have to say it was in the hospital, the morning after she was born. Hannah and I were alone together in my room, and it was totally quiet. We were looking into each other’s eyes, and she just seemed so… aware…so sentient. There was this overwhelming sense that she was somehow…all-knowing. It might sound crazy, but it felt like our roles were switched, like I was the baby and she was the mother. It’s hard to explain.” She finished with a shrug. Hannah, who was looking at her, nodded.
Andy paused for a few moments. “Thank you for sharing that with us, Monica. It’s all so intriguing. Let me ask, do you ever think about the future? No one has a crystal ball, of course, but what do you foresee as you look ahead?”
“That’s a really good question,” Monica replied. “In a lot of ways I’m afraid to think about that. I would say that, like any parents, we just want our child to be happy. As much as possible, we want her to have a normal life. But, realistically, if Hannah stays at the pace she’s going, with all this notoriety, what’s her life going to be? I mean, just in the near term, what kind of childhood is she going to have? Not to sound cornball, but what about Santa Claus and things like that? Then you hear about all the problems child actors have with fame, so it scares me. And not to sound selfish, but what about my husband and me? Will our marriage be affected? I don’t think there’s a self-help book for something like this. It’s… ”
Monica shrugged and Brian took over.
“We don’t know where it’s going, obviously, but I know we’ll get through it because we’re a family that loves each other,” he said. “I’m just hoping that people and the press will give us some space.”
Monica added, “We do want to thank the Gloucester Police who’ve been helping us so much, and the doctors and nurses at Fahey Hospital who’ve been there for us too.” Her voice squeezed with emotion, “I hope you know that we couldn’t do this without you.”
Seeing the upraised finger from his producer indicated time was running down. Andy began to wrap up. “Hannah, Brian, Monica, I wish we could talk longer, but I promised I’d keep it short for the sake of our little celebrity here, so we should say goodbye for now. Hannah, it was delightful chatti
ng with you. You’re amazing. I hope you and your mommy and daddy will come back to see us again soon.”
Hannah gathered that her time on TV was nearing an end, and she didn’t take it well. Despite her annoyance at all the questions, she had enjoyed basking in the attention and high level of engagement in such a sensory-rich environment. Andy’s attempt at a handshake was first met with her folding her arms and turning away. But ultimately she reconsidered and reached out to him.
Later that evening Andy reviewed a video of the interview in the production room, and he wrote down the numbers that Hannah had recited: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-8-1-7-4-2-6-5-8-2-2-1-2-3-5-7-11-13. He called out to his technician with a question that had been bugging him, as something in the middle of the sequence appeared vaguely familiar. “Cindy, what’s the administrative coordinator’s phone number? The number that you gave the Blakes last week?”
“Um, it’s 817-426-5822.”
“That’s crazy,” Andy said in disbelief. He then examined the numbers that Hannah had recited after the phone number. 1-2-3-5-7-11-13. He couldn’t make any sense out of them. He assumed they were random numbers. They were not.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Playground (8 months old)
Hannah sat patiently on her rose-colored BabyBjorn potty chair, absorbed in a children’s book entitled, How to Succeed in Doing Your Business, Without Really Trying. Monica had begun reading picture books to her baby every day after realizing her prodigious abilities. But with each passing week, Hannah was calling out more and more words before Monica had read them aloud. Gradually the position of the books had moved from her mother’s lap, over to her own lap. Soon after, Hannah was reading to Monica, with her mom there to guide her. The child was researching the subject of toilet training independently, and with great seriousness, as she found the process of being diapered to be quite demeaning.
“Make your pawents pwoud of you. Show them you can do a poo,” she read aloud. Certainly she wanted to make Monica and Brian proud of her, but she did wonder if parents were too easily impressed by their children’s accomplishments.
Monica called in, “Honey, are you okay? The twins are at the door with their mommy, and want to go to the playground with us.”
Hannah was torn. She wanted to play, but she was also sensing that something groundbreaking was about to happen.
“Give me minute,” she called back. “I think this the moment!”
After the baby was done celebrating her personal triumph on the potty, the group was off to the park. Although Hannah had been walking for weeks with her pediatrician’s approval, Monica plopped her into a carriage for the lengthy stroll. The excursion was wondrous for her, though as usual, the more she learned, the more she realized that there was so much she didn’t know. Despite her fantastic ability to absorb, store, and recall information, she was still unschooled with the countless things that require real-world experience to understand. As Monica pushed her stroller past a pizza shop, Hannah saw a large banner hanging in front that read, Delivery Drivers Wanted! The child became genuinely concerned.
“Mommy, did dwivers do something weally bad?”
Monica howled with laughter, and had to explain that this wasn’t the same as a police “Wanted” poster.
When one of the girls asked Marie for some Doritos, Hannah wondered if tiny doors were tasty. “Door-eat-o’s” to her ears.
As the group continued along the sidewalk, Hannah turned her attention to a curious phenomenon that had puzzled her for some time, and was still confounding her. She could see that objects such as parked cars and houses would enter and pass by her field of vision as the group moved along, changing their perceived size as they went. Yet the gibbous moon, which floated in the blue sky on this day, was not changing size at all, and seemed to be traveling along beside them. As they passed trees, Hannah could see that while the branches steadily moved by her, the moon didn’t. It moved right through the trees, drifting along beside her, like a pal that wanted to go to the park too. When the group stopped at a crosswalk, the moon froze in place.
She had observed this visual oddity several times before when in a car and looking out the side window at night. On those occasions, the moon appeared to be traveling at high speed, as if it was chasing them, but then would stop and wait patiently while the car sat at a red light.
By the time they arrived at the park, Hannah had cunningly figured out the basis of this optical mystery. When they had left the house, the moon had been at a specific point in the sky, and when they arrived at their destination ten minutes later, the moon was in essentially the same position. That meant that it had always been in the same place in the sky during the entire trip, hence the illusion that it was moving along with her. It wasn’t actually moving at all.
But what would make an object appear fixed in place in the sky, and unchanged in size, even though they had traveled a good distance? What differentiated the moon from the similar-looking white globes atop lampposts along the route? Those objects appeared to grow larger as she approached them, and then passed behind her as she moved along.
Hannah realized it was simple. The man in the moon must live incredibly far away, and he must be a giant.
While at the park, Hannah was overjoyed with the congregation of children at play. At the same time, she was entranced with the physics exhibition on display. It was an intellectual playground to her just as much as it was a fun place to play. She observed the pendulum motion of the swings as Leah and Sophia swept back and forth rhythmically above the ground. What was propelling them? How could they get that high just by kicking their feet slightly? Or were there other forces at work? She watched as a line of boys and girls were climbing a ladder to the top of a slide. They would sit down, lean their body forward, and then magically they would accelerate like a car to the bottom. Yet they didn’t have an engine like cars and trains. Hannah then became fixated on a group of trees that were shedding the last of their leaves in the late autumn breeze. The leaves seemed to be jumping off the trees, and an invisible force guided them all down to the ground, but never in a straight line as she had observed with most other dropped objects. Instead, they seemed to meander about, buffeted randomly, as if they were encountering another invisible force, or shadowy hidden object in the ether.
Monica pushed Hannah’s stroller within view of a large stand-up tic-tac-toe game, where children were taking turns moving square rollers to designate an X or O. Reluctantly, Monica was dragged into a conversation with some admirers of her daughter, which gave the baby time to study this activity. Hannah first took stock of the grid. It had three rows of three, for a total of nine squares. It took her only a short while to figure out what was going on. She noticed that as the children rolled each square, it would change from blank, to X or O, then back to blank. Two children would face a grid of all blanks, and then take turns moving the rollers, just like a conversation. One child was turning the rollers to reveal Xs, while the one was always turning them to Os. She observed that whenever three Xs or three Os were created in a straight line, either vertically, horizontally, or diagonally, one child would become very happy. This was the object of the game, she deduced. A player tried to get three of one letter in a row, while at the same time trying to stop the other person from getting three in a row of their kind. If all the tiles were turned over and there weren’t three of a kind in a straight line, no one seemed happy. Hannah realized this must be a tie. When the game was over, the kids would turn all the rollers on the board back to blank.
At one point, an older boy was defeating a younger boy over and over again, and the losing child was getting more upset each time.
“Beat ya again, Teddy-boy. Haaaaa!”
“Shut up, Huey! And stop calling me Teddy-boy!”
“Tic-Tac-Toe, O-O-O! Tic-Tac-Toe, O-O-O!” The older boy was marking off each syllable by pointing out the Os in an exaggerated way, so as to inflict as muc
h mental anguish on the youngster as possible.
Teddy went postal, lunging at his older brother with his fists flailing wildly. The older boy easily deflected the volley, then threw him to the ground. Teddy quickly leapt back onto his feet screaming, and the two proceeded to punch, claw, and grab at each other. Their mother came bounding over to intervene.
“Boys, stop it! Stop it!” she cried, before being struck in the head with an errant fist.
Other adults rushed over and pulled the boys apart, while the mother continued hollering at them.
“That’s it! We’re all going home. Right now!”
The woman was embarrassed and flustered. She tried to fix her hair and adjust her glasses to regain her composure before leaving, when her six-year-old daughter marched up to her protesting bitterly.
“I don’t wanna leave the playground, Ma. I didn’t do anything, why should I have to leave? Why, why, why?”
The woman didn’t even respond. She just stared at her daughter, looking bewildered and defeated. In protest the young girl deliberately wiped her mud-covered hands onto the front of her cream-colored sweatshirt, which featured a delightful drawing of a baby fox. The mom appeared mortified. Hannah viewed her own mother with newfound appreciation. She looked up at her and announced her latest discovery. “Mommy, childwen is painful.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Wishes, Gifts & Friends
(1 year old)
Since the moment of Hannah’s birth on March 16th, the Earth had completed one entire orbit around its sun, which emitted waves of energy upon which all life on the planet depended. Equally wondrous, but on a much tinier scale, the energy of sound waves were transported through the air in the Blakes’ living room, like invisible Slinkys into Hannah’s ears.
Happy Birthday to you,
