3V0233.08 Dancing, disappearance, and reappearance 9/12

Last night (9/12) Peggy sat in my lap as we played some records I brought back from Boston. Robby and Miriam had been cooped up inside this rainy afternoon, and when they heard some fast jigs and reels by De Danaan, went into their own version of step dancing which rapidly became a session of dancing around the house. Behind the couch, behind the chair where Peggy and I sat, around again and past the piano. Peggy turned and twisted to follow their path. Out through the short hall past the fireplace — then Peggy saw them reappear through the glass doors on the far side of the fireplace (a see-through one). Peggy was engrossed. Here were important people in her life doing unusual things, appearing and disappearing. These sequences must have been very mysterious. Especially when hidden factors and actions make prediction impossible. Sometimes the older kids would dance past the far side of the fireplace and could be seen. Other times they would crawl past the opening below the level of the high hearth and reappear in the fireplace window from the wrong side.

RELEVANCE — The first incident testifies to Peggy’s experimenting with objects and space. The second highlights again the problem of conceiving of object permanence (in terms of predictable movement) when people with self-control behave in ways difficult to predict. Is object permanence developing the perspective that some things are not willful and mobile?

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