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Show Motherlunge a novel 24 which the maternal influence would be particularly potent, the most marked of which would occur at ages eighteen months, three years, and five years. Yet at eighteen months, Pavia belonged to Alva. It was Alva who fed her and dressed her. Alva moved with her through the apartment, shushing and sweeping. She sometimes ruffled Pavia's hair before smoothing it down. So did Dorothy, sometimes. At age three and half years, Pavia had a new baby sister. On the advice of Dr. Guesten's fourth chapter, Dorothy encouraged Pavia to acknowledge sibling rivalry and promoted constructive ways that the expected emotional response could be healthily exercised, for example through Regression Outlets. Yet when Dorothy spoke baby-talk to Pavia, Pavia ignored her. When Dorothy invited her to nurse at her breast like her baby sister, Pavia ran to hide in the hall closet.. Apparently, Pavia wanted neither regression nor outlet. Pavia did display some of the hallmark characteristics of this fascinating age of three years; she was indeed defiant and intractable, for example. But this could have been because Dorothy got sick again soon after her baby sister (me) was bom, which compelled Dorothy to stay in bed, as after Pavia's own birth. Or, it could have been because Alva suddenly died of a heart attack. She had been lifting a bag of Johnny Kat in the garage, intending to sprinkle cat litter on the front steps as extra traction in the ice. Alva was still holding the bag in her arms when Walter found her, a grey pieta, next to her Plymouth. And at five years, the last of the developmental moments drawn with such detail-like studies for a sculpture-in Dr. G's landmark tome, Pavia was riot clingy and withdrawn. She was, her kindergarten teacher Mrs. Cullum said, unusually self- |