The "Mine" Field
Written By Catherine Newman
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Birdy will cover your face and neck in kisses; her eyes go glossy with feeling at the sight of a newborn, a grandparent, or a photograph of a chick; she caresses pets so gently I'm never even certain if her palm is making contact with their fur. But sharing? "Mine," she says, reaching her hand into my blueberry container at the u-pick farm. "Mine," she says again, cramming a handful of plump berries into her mouth. "My booberries," she slurs through her mouthful of berry flesh and purple teeth. "Would you like some?" I ask her, as sweet and mild as pie. "Please help yourself, Birdy. I'm happy to share my berries with you." But my good role modeling doesn't take: A minute later I hear her again, two rows of bushes away, shrieking, "Mine! Mine!" and then her 5-year-old brother, Ben, as patient as an old sheepdog, is explaining, "No, Birdy. These are mine. You can have some, but you already ate all of yours." It's true. Birdy's container holds a rattling green berry or two. "Would you yike one?" she asks in a generous falsetto, holding the green berries out to me like a plate of canapés before grabbing them up in a fist and swallowing them. "Mine."
At the zoo, I have watched as one young chimp snatched a tangerine from another and popped it into his screaming, triumphant mouth. I imagine the first people on earth were the same: one cave toddler seizing another's mammoth-skin teddy bear, while the weary cave parents try the same necessary-but-pathetic tactics we try — "What if you two take turns?" Like us, the cave dwellers likely discovered the problem with this: Although taking turns oers a concrete yours-mine rhythm that may be easier to grasp than the abstract free-for-all of sharing, it still requires, well, sharing.
"My turn!" Birdy announces to Ben while she stands on the little wooden slide in our living room, planting her sticky feet on its slope like a defiant surfer. Then she cries, "Your turn, Benny!" but without moving. Then: "My turn again!" Ben rolls his eyes and wanders back to his watercolor painting. But later, when Birdy climbs into my lap and says, "My mama!" he takes the bait. "My mama," he says back, squeezing himself in beside her. And it occurs to me that, for siblings, this is the primal sharing scene: the divvying up of parental resources.
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