azurelunatic | Duckling!

That's good?

Very good.

Despite the day-to-day ups and downs, Darkside and I are very exceptionally close, and the fact that he's opening up to me is delightful and encouraging. He doesn't open up to anyone.

I think it's a phrasing thing again. "Imprinting" and "duckling" have such a diminutive effect. I'd be really annoyed if anyone interpreted my action that way -- as if I didn't have volition.

Watching ducklings is such fun. When they're in a contained area and/or Mother Duck is standing still, they are all over the place, each one going in a very separate, but very distinct and purposeful, direction. But when Mother Duck goes somewhere, the ducklings alter their course to stay with Mommy, even when they have their adult feathers barely in...

Ducks are primary forces of chaos in action to me, especially ducklings. There is so much seemingly uncontained, uncontainable action going on, yet there's a greater order to it. The forces by which this happen, the ties of unknowable duck familial affection, are along the lines of divine mystery to me. We raised a family of ducks, for a while. It wasn't a very functional family. The mother was neglectful and the father was abusive (by chicken standards, at least) so the geese ended up adopting the babies.

One of the things that stuck with me unshakably was the way that when Dabble quacked, her babies would come up and follow behind her. No matter how old they got, as long as they were with us, they'd follow when Mommy quacked. Though it's the pathetic fallacy, I choose to believe that the ducklings followed Dabble out of love. She was, after all, their mother...

When I speak of Darkside as a duckling, my visualization is that of a nearly-grown duck. The nearly-grown ducks wandered all over the place on their own. They were adults, really, just as soon as they realized it. Watching bitty ducklings zoom across the ground with intent is engrossing, but nothing compared to the complexity of watching the same number of near-adult ducks do the same. Unsure of themselves and their wings, and clinging to comfortable patterns, but close to fully grown.

The near-adult ducklings had plenty of volition of their own, and so with Darkside. But Darkside has spent nearly the past two years walking everywhere in the school with me. We walk together to class. I walk with him to his car. When we walk back to the cafeteria from the computer lab, and I'm lagging behind, he pauses and waits for me until I'm caught up. When he gets up to go somewhere, if I am doing nothing critical, I go with him. He waits for me to save his work; I wait for him to put his game books back in his backpack.

I am his closest adult female friend, and one of his first friends as an adult. I am one of his few friends as an adult. He learned sex and high-school dating from someone else. He will learn adult relationships from me, whether he and I ever date or not. The women in his life are: his mother,

votania, Dawn, and me. His relationship with Votania, though it was good while it lasted, is filed with the rest of the things he's tried that haven't worked. His mother is his mother. Dawn is a friend, but far more of a maternal influence. Whether I like it or not, every interaction between us is being filed away in that delightfully analytical mind of his as how one does interact with women. It's not only him imprinting on me, but a sacred responsibility on my part to provide him with good habits.

When he walks somewhere at school, it has become natural to him to stay close to me, to look for me, to wait for me, to walk with me, adjust our paces to match. When I gently edge off to go my own direction, not intending him to follow but not bidding him to leave, he sticks with me until it dawns on him that the direction I am walking was not the direction he was intending. When he comes to this realization, he does not blindly follow; he either goes the direction of his original intent, or willingly matches pace with me.

It takes hours and hours of observation to even begin to know a duck. Even a duckling. Fuzzy and tiny are just barely touching on the surface of it.

Duckling!

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