Personalities

Ben and Lana were chatting last night before she went to sleep, as they are wont to do. Lana's been sleeping on the futon in the playroom since we cleared out a lot of our stuff to stage the house for sale. Ben commented that he thought it was cool that Lana was using the bed on which she was born. And, indeed, in the middle of a rainstorm two houses ago, Lana did come into the world on that very futon. And yes, we had a plastic sheet on it. And yes, we planned to have a home-birth.

Ben said that even then, that night of her birth, she was very much herself. A person, a personality, already.

Lana said, "But you didn't know what I was going to be like."

Ben agreed. But he said that with every day she has just become more of who she is. And that person is very distinctive. A person with likes and dislikes.

Lana gave this some thought.

"Like I'd never wear overalls," she said.

Mae loves overalls. But Mae is a tree-climbing, bike-racing, chicken-chasing, overall sort of person. Lana, on the other hand, has had at least four pair of overalls in her drawer over the years and never once has she allowed them on her body, even as an infant. She is decidedly not an overall sort of person.

She gave the whole overall concept a moment more thought.

"Unless", she said, "I was a farmer."