I love life and how it knows just when to throw a curve ball.
I admit that there are times, many times where absolutely I could be found gloating to other parents about what some might consider an adversity.
I believe I've said, "All girls should have Asperges Syndrome", dozens of times over the past couple of years and I meant it, but not really. Sometimes I just want to make it seem like an utter blessing...
For the most part, my daughter does lack a certain drama that seems to hitch itself to the star of many tween females as they mature - and I do relish that. I'm often grateful for the differences.
I love that I pick her clothes and that she easily agrees with my choices. Though it was hard to drag her away from those white, plastic, 9 dollar, velcro closing tennis shoes she wore tirelessly, year after year. The ones I could only find replacement for at certain Walmarts, worn solely by my child and a handful of third world, pseudo nurses parked outside of inner city drugstores asking for loose change on behalf of a charity I never heard of but supported just based on their sneakers alone.
I love her self imposed discipline with sweets. I love that she must do her homework before watching TV. I love that she brushes her teeth exactly as instructed. I love that she seems to care little for boys and shopping, doesn't want an Iphone, won't succumb to fast food and has never tasted soda and that soda is loathsome to her simply because I allowed her to watch "Fast Food Nation" multiple times when she was four years old. I love the uniqueness of my daughter and her gift of Asperges and I love it's affect on my life through her, my incredible child.
I admire her. I cherish her. I wouldn't trade her for the world and I wouldn't change a thing about her if my life depended on it...but sometimes I want to run away from her, even now that she's wearing better shoes.
It's a trick, I think to myself.
The calmness, the flat demeanor, the lack of drama, it's a trick.
Or maybe she's a volcano, sleeping mostly and dormant, beautiful to look at, inviting and majestic, but then it blows and all hell breaks loose and those of us who worship and live beside the sleeping volcano get pelted with heaps of deadly, boiling hot, molten lava and we are ill prepared for the rare and unexpected fallout to say the least.
Last night my volcanic daughter erupted and last night I reeled with worry over what to do and how to do it and I felt her feelings like I feel my own and man how I missed the cool, calm and collected version of her.
I slept like a stone all night, safe in the depth of slumber from what daylight hands us.
Words like "bullied" and names like "hairy arms" are waiting for her at school, the very school she wins academic awards at and seems to love most days. The one I say challenges her perfectly, the place I've thanked God for. How can a good mother allow her great child to walk into school when there in lies the ugliest hardship of life? I need to protect her and I can't, but I can't accept that, because I never have to deal with it! I only have to persuade her to wear cooler shoes. She's easy peasy, until she's not and again, I'm ill prepared.
So today, as school let out, I met her in my usual parking space, with an unusual amount of anxiety in my heart, a smile plastered across my face, two dogs on leashes and a perfect, red Honeycrisp apple sliced into 8 equal sections, just the way she likes it (THANK YOU again Fast Food Nation, who knew?). And together we went down to the edge of the world. There beside the wild ocean, we talked about how hard life can be. There we let go of our collective worries. There we discussed subtleties and techniques of how exactly one might let things roll off your back. There I suggested witty comebacks but sometimes I'm very wrong and so we let go of that idea too.
And as I watched her walk away from me; my precious girl and her big, terrible, awful, lovable monster of a dog beside her, I realized I was not just letting her go, I was in fact letting go of her - a little bit. I let her separate from me, put some distance between us. I let her grow up a little and venture from the soft, safe sand to the jagged edged jetty and I trusted that the waves wouldn't come sweeping up to wash her away from me and out of my life. I let go and believed that someone besides just me would keep looking out for her, understanding that she was really very similar to other girls her age, just like the rest of em, a tween...
Tween heaven and earth.
Between,
Beneath
Before and after
Everything, my love for my daughter.
I love this...and you too.
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