Jordan’s evening regressions seemed increasingly pronounced to Sally after the kids’ weekend visit with Ted. As had been the case before, she was able to get herself to school alright and Sally hadn’t heard any reports of bad behaviors or problems once she arrived there; each of these were signs of a certain degree of maturity. Of course Jordan’s big “win” with advancing in the story competition was a sign of her obvious intellectual capacity. But when nighttime came each day, the twelve year old seemed to just give up and let Sally take over. Nightly, the mother of three took care of the girl’s intimate needs with a patient voice and a soft touch.

Because of Sally’s empathy for Jordan considering her experience over the past several months, she continued to dote over her with as much tenderness as ever. In addition, she couldn’t deny how undeniably sweet her daughter behaved during those nighttime moments as well. Rather than the pragmatic conversations she had had with the girl a month or so earlier about the kind of precautions she needed to take with regards to feminine care and the duties she needed to follow through on with regard to her bedwetting, Sally’s motherly actions now were unspoken and seemingly automatic; driven by quiet intuition.

Each morning during Jordan’s final week of school before Christmas break Sally had gone into her room to wake her in the morning. The girl had responded by curling up, shaking, and softly crying as she had done the night she returned home from Ted’s. Each day, Sally held her and rocked her before leading her quietly by the hand to the bathroom for careful cleaning. Each day Sally had removed the girl’s soggy diaper and gently helped her into the tub. There, she helped bath the twelve year old much like she still did with Jen – from head to toe. Each day Jordan had meekly thanked her Mom after being toweled dry and wrapped up in a more adult-looking manner under her armpits. She from there assumed what had heretofore been her ‘normal’ pre-teen rituals of morning preparations.

Thinking back herself about these rather organically developing patterns each evening and morning, Jordan felt overwhelmed. In one sense, she felt flooded by the massive ocean of her mom’s love. The new sense of feeling cared for and ‘seen’ was palatable….like something from a movie or novel. It was truly unreal; almost ‘too good to be true’. In another sense, Jordan felt dumbfounded by the dawning reality that she was having such positive emotions about (at age twelve), being diapered nightly by her mother.

This conflation of positive emotion and wonder led the pre-teen to feel fleeting pangs of guilt; she began to question if it was ‘ok’ for her to ‘like’ the kind of attention she was receiving as much as she was beginning to understand she did. The times her mom spent each morning and night with her, tenderly touching and cleaning her, gently patting an pulling, cuddling before bed, and stroking her hair – they were oddly calming and even hypnotizing.

How can this be good and proper? Jordan thought. Having been raised a conservative Christian her entire life, she simply had little room to accommodate the kind of simple, pure, and non-sexual comfort she had discovered (consciously – for the first time in her life) in her mom’s care.

On yet another level, Jordan was confused by feelings of kind of liking how the diapers themselves felt on her body. It was strange (and perhaps this was the strangest and most disturbing part to her). Even then, she probably couldn’t have admitted it to herself or even described it – and she was ashamed that the hint of desire was even present. But undeniably, there grew a part of her each day that looked forward to the nightly ritual when Sally would unwrap the pale pink plastic incontinence device, slide it under her rear, pull it up tightly on her midsection, and fasten it in place. Even though it was embarrassing to have her mom see her naked genitals on a daily basis, even though it was somewhat humiliating to wake up soaked in warm urine (and sometimes blood), even though it was a little degrading to have her mom smear cream on her privates or wipe them clean in the morning, there was still an aspect in all of it that felt cautiously good in a secret-guilty kind of way.

At multiple points during her bedwetting over the past month and a half (and all through the season of increasing care her mother had offered), Jordan had considered calling her Mom off and insisting that she could do it herself. Surely, a twelve year old was able to care for herself; she could take care of it if she wanted!

And for God’s sake I most certainly am competent enough! I’m smart; I’m a writer; I get almost all A’s; I’m growing up – I mean, I’m even more adult sized than my mom!!

But the twice-a-day moments of helpless submission were too enchanting to consider giving up. Jordan simply couldn’t find the courage to speak the truth or to say “no” to what she had grown to count on for emotional support in such a short span of time.

Little did either Jordan or Sally realize that five-year-old Mindi had been catching very perceptive glimpses of their interactions each morning and evening since she had moved into her sister’s room. Mindi didn’t want to be treated like a baby herself, but she did wish her mom would care for her similarly. Although she couldn’t have expressed it precisely this way at the time, the five-year-old was beginning to feel resentment that Sally was giving so much extra love and attention to her older sister.