Your mom calls it a changing table. But your dad calls it the Table of Self-Awareness.
A shallow, padded halfpipe sits atop a white-painted dresser holding your dozens of hand-me-down onesies and hoodies and beanies and bibs and socks and mits and newborn sleeping bags washed and folded and sorted according to age-specific sizes. Moist wipes and cloth diapers covering a full rainbow of colors stack upside down within arm's reach, and the black-and-white mobile spins slowly above.
But when you're placed on that padded halfpipe, the one your mom and dad change your diaper on, then something about your whole existence, from your perspective, changes. The full length mirror, hung horizontally to your left, never lets go of your attention. You see you. You also see a reflection of your mom, or your dad, whoever's pulling duty, and you see the yellow beams from the ceiling lamp lighting up that mirrored panorama.
Your arms begin to shake. Your hands conducting some unseen symphony. Your fingers splay and clasp like somatic ingredients to spellcasting. And then a sound escapes your mouth. Small. Abrupt. Deliberate. And then the spell components, the arms waving about, the fingers pointing and clenching, subsist.
You see your reflection again. And this time your legs join the orchestral conduction. Left leg. Right leg. Both feet burst forward and above you. And then, at the culminating point of all this energy, this internal combustion of linguistic coal-fires, this vocal chi-gong, there's another outburst. Small. Abrupt. Every bit as deliberate and perfected as the first.
The words are coming. And your mom and dad await every one of them.
