Ahh, my youngest daughter. She is quite a unique little girl. Smart as can be as well as a little pistol. I find myself thinking some days that this is going to be a loooooong summer with her. But then there are those days where I don't even know she's here.
Last year she won the Newberry Award for a book she wrote and this year she participated in the spelling bee among other things. She was top of her class for all of the year, reads like a maniac, and wants so badly to be as old as her older sisters. Poor thing, I can most certainly sympathize with that.
Funny how things work in a family. The younger ones seem to get away with so much more, the rules are more lax, and the boundaries are much different for them than the older ones. Not by choice and not even on purpose, parenting just gets more relaxed is all and most importantly, parents also grow with their kids. She has most definately gotten away with way more than her sisters. I don't think that that is an uncommon thing among any family really.
Tonight she stood by while I did my best at erecting a soccer net for them. Something in which Pat and I have not bought in all the years that our kids have played soccer. Pathetic?? Well, yes actually but at least I finally got one.
So, while I struggled for over an hour to put together something that I thought would take only a few minutes, she stood by silently and did what she was told by me, and chuckled and made jokes at dumb things I did. Or she pointed out what I did wrong. One of which she wouldn't stop pointing out was how lopsided this net was. I insisted that nothing is ever made correctly these days and continued to struggle to get that net woven through all the poles.
Once we had it all together, her and I surveyed the net and it just didn't look right but again, I pushed it aside while she reminded me again about how crooked it was. She just kept on talking about how crooked it was.
Well, we proceeded to move the net down the hill and found a spot that was as close to level as we can get in this yard. But when we set it down it seemed as though the ground shifted under one side. I lifted my side nearly a foot off the ground just to make it level with hers. I told her, "Man, our yard is really lopsided!"
Again I hear, "Mom, that net is really crooked!" Well, after I scanned the yard my eyes fell back on the net, I saw the problem. Ok, so I'm ok at being a handy person and love to assemble things but why is it on something that should be so simple, I seem to mess it up while a whole entertainment center I can do and everything looks great! I know why actually, I don't pay close attention to the small details, such as which way a pole should connect with the other.
I had attached a pole backwards. In the end, I fixed the problem thinking it would take me yet another 20 minutes to re-weave the net but I managed to do it in under 5. After all was said and done, I hear this little voice from behind me saying, "See mom? I TOLD you the net was crooked" and she snickered at me.
I told her to use the damn thing and went up the hill to stew over my silly blunder.
Of all my kids, she has got to be the one who loves to point it out. My intuition tells me that she will one day accomplish something with her life, that she will be a strong person. But then there are those moments where her sensitivity is so overpowering that I feel my mother-wings coming out to protect her. Letting her grow up is very difficult but inevitable. There are times when she is already smarter than she is given credit for, but get her on a bad day and all you have to do is look at those black eyes and know that she is on the war path.
But for tonight, she stood by my side patiently and was the little girl that used to need me so much, that used to want to be around me more. Those moments are coming less and less and those times for me to step back and soak them up are coming more and more. She won't be my baby forever, she may be in age but not in who she becomes.
No comments:
Post a Comment