Moy Moy has been pretty patient with us. For years now, we have been treating her like a baby, and she hasn’t objected too strongly. Her corner of the room is full of toys and storybooks and we dress her in “frocks” and put bows in her hair. Why did it take us so long to wake up to the fact that just because she doesn’t speak it doesn’t follow that she is an infant?

Yesterday morning when I got up I suddenly realized this had to stop. It happened when I was cleaning her shelves. I took one stupid toy after another down from the rack, thinking, “She doesn’t like this one; she never looks at that one; I’ll give this one to Rainbow,” and the scales dropped from my eyes: Moy Moy is 18 years old! What possessed us to think toys and nursery rhymes were what she needed? So today I am packing up a box to give to Rainbow and Cathleen and I are going to go through her wardrobe and get rid of all the inappropriate clothes we have collected for her.

Best of all, we have started reading to her from the things we are reading – yesterday, Cathleen read her a newspaper article about a government official who asked all his ministers to ride bicycles to work as a gesture of environmental awareness and the need for conservation. It was a hilarious account of these overweight, out-of-shape ministers struggling to stay on their cycles and finally being PUSHED up the hills by their poor security men and aides! Moy Moy was most amused.

And the look on her face above says it all: “Took you long enough, guys!”