After the drinks and food was served, all the guests became mellow. The children and infants were well-fed and dozed in the repletion of a full meal. Certainly the older children and adults had reason to complain about their sumptuous dinner. The roast “beast” was as fabulous as the garlicked potatoes and Hollandaise-drenched asparagus that were side dishes for the meal they served for the adults and older children.

After dinner for the adults and older children had taken place, and the toddlers had been ensconced in one of the two high chairs provided for feeding and then released to drink their ba-ba’s on the floor in front of their parents while basking on the carpet and lying on their backs. The obvious attempts of the wide-eyed innocents to make eye-contact with their parents was a direct attempt on the part of the babies to bond with their parents. The babies were removed from the two playpen to play within the sight of their parents and so that they might deport themselves in an adorable clowning manner that insured that their parents loved and appreciated them. Kayla fussed and finally made a mess in her diaper to force her mother to remove her from the sight of the laughing parents. To her dismay, after her costume was removed and her diaper was changed, she was returned to the living room wearing nothing but a thick, disposable overnight diaper and the absurd jester’s cap.

The crowd loved the variation on baby Kayla’s jester’s costume. They laughed and cheered the antics of the baby clown as they took photos for their family albums. When Kayla began to whimper in infantine embarrassment, Anthea put a pacifier in her mouth to silence her cries. The group of parents chuckled their approval as Kayla’s infantile reflexes caused her to immediately begin to relieve her anxiety by rhythmically sucking on the latex soother. After one of the mothers picked her up, cuddled her and told her what a cute baby she was, Kayla calmed down and began to clown for everyone’s enjoyment. Even though she was surrounded by adorable babies, she was the center of attention. She loved basking in the light of parental approval of the adults! Suddenly she came to the wordless understanding that all the “big” there were her mommies and daddies. She was everyone’s baby! She sat down with her legs in front of her and crowed in delight at the feeling of gemutlichkeit that surrounded her. Then she began to foolishly giggle in a fit of happiness. Everyone was enthralled by the sweet baby girl who was so delightfully entertaining.

The party was a smashing success! Their friends adored them, both for their generosity and for their creativity. Although many of their friends hoped that their efforts would be repeated at Christmas, it was not to be. They observed the Yule Holiday without a party, instead having a few close friends over for a buffet and Wassail. Of all the Holidays in the year, Mark and Anthea enjoyed the Festival of Samhain most of all. Samhain was the time of transformations. It was symbolic to them of their own transformation which had brought them together and made man and wife.

In a real sense, Anthea had gone home. She had arrived. She had rediscovered the utterly complete and serene happiness of infancy. Because they were useless to her, her subconscious ceased refreshing the memories of her former adult life. Even computer memory, though non-chemical in nature, needs to be “refreshed” from time-to-time. As the unused paths formed by the dendrites between neurons of her brain were reclaimed for other uses, her “permanent” memories began to slowly empty themselves from her mind like thick liquid through an ultra-fine sieve. Her brain was automatically erasing itself to make room for her current memories and situation in life. Under normal circumstances, an infant’s memories would be “overwritten” by later memories, but the spell that caused Anthea’s transmogrification into infancy had reversed the normal process. Like a jam-packed disk drive chock-full of important data whose first letters of its file names had been changed in one fell swoop to sigma, telling the BIOS that those drive sectors were available for reuse, her memories were being inexorably written over with the nonsensical twaddle and babble of a baby’s existence, then returned to a pristine state as her volatile, short-term memories faded during the night. Anthea was slowly being erased.

The day soon came when, after towel her dry after Anthea had finished her sweetly-scented baby bubble bath, that her mother had held her naked body on her hip with a tiny, chubby leg both fore and aft while standing before the vanity mirror of the master bathroom and showed Anthea what a pretty baby she was. Anthea looked at the reflection of an adorable baby girl with blue eyes and the fat cheeks of a nursing infant in the mirror with the wide eyes of complete incomprehension. The baby before her was only a nameless extension of the person she called “ma-ma”.