Glee-Whiz Kid a Far Cry From Colicky Infant

They are not long, the days of whines and diapers. You wonder if they’ll ever end, and suddenly they’re a memory.

I thought about this when I ran into Cynthia, my Hannah’s old nursery school teacher. It’s been seven years now since Hannah climbed the career ladder to kindergarten and said “bye-bye” to her.

“And how’s Hannah?” she asked.

“Still happy!” I bragged. “We haven’t broken her spirit.”

It was Cynthia who started calling my daughter Happy Hannah when she was 3 years old, and it woke us up to the fact that we had a gifted child. I don’t mean gifted in intelligence, although Hannah is clearly bright. Hannah’s gift is the ability to have a good time. Contrary to the myth, not every child has this.

We didn’t notice it at first because Hannah was a colicky baby. She had that mysterious ailment that causes babies to start crying at sundown and not stop until exhaustion overtakes them several hours later. Nobody is sure why some kids get this and some kids don’t. Or why it starts at 2 weeks and mysteriously stops at 3 months.

My husband and I ceased caring about “why” on those nights when we rocked Hannah on our knees till we were ready to collapse or rode around in the car until she fell asleep, only to have the crying resume as soon as our heads hit the pillow.

It took a few years after the colic stopped for me to realize: She had cried every night for three months and then hardly ever again. She would fall off her bike, smash her head on a cabinet, lose a softball game--and barely a peep.

But it wasn’t just her absence of sorrow that seemed to distinguish Hannah. It was her capacity for glee. When she was 5, I took her to New York and we stayed with a dancer friend. As she cut loose in his studio and, impromptu, did the kind of Dance to Joy that modern choreographers long to create, he turned to me and said, “She’s got that gleam in her eye.”

It was true. You get so involved with making sure your kids learn what they need that you hardly notice what they bring to the table.

I swear, Hannah was born with the kind of social skills they don’t teach in school. When I see her working a party, I realize how simple it all is: She’s interested in what other people have to say. She just wants to have fun, and everyone can tell.

It’s a special challenge to discipline a happy child, to be the bearers of bad tidings, to have to wipe that smile off her face. So when I bragged to Cynthia that we didn’t break Hannah’s spirit, it is probably the thing I am most proud of as her mother. It’s hard not to spoil her when you’re trying not to spoil her. How easily she can charm you into feeling that she needn’t go to bed or clean her room or brush her teeth like the rest of the suckers.

This week, she’s away at camp. I think about those colicky nights when I wondered if I’d ever survive this child. Now I wonder if I’ll survive a week without her.