Child Ode

In the interest of thinking positive, what with all the doom and gloom, this is the first of three Odes to the Short Drunk People. I figure if there ever was a time to take stock of what is loved, now is it. And since I suck at math, better I do  this than count blessings:

When I was pregnant with her, I knew her. I knew she would be more like me than my first born and that I would pay for it. I knew she would have freckles. I named her Rory before her hair turned reddish and I pronounced that I hoped she would be "scrappy" before she showed any kind of signs of scrappy. Which she did, at 13 months.

She climbed out of her crib before she could walk. She got out of the tent we put over her crib and climbed out again. She put a stick through a belt and called it a sword. It was the last time she wore a skirt, which was plaid: she was Braveheart to me. 

She had temper tantrums that lasted for 45 minutes and brought me to my crying, sniveling knees. She had chronic ear infections until the tubes and she could not tolerate a hair brush or the seam on a sock or any idea of being wronged. Her father said she had "a keen sense of justice" and I admired him for his way with words, for spinning Her so beautifully. 

She could not find a shoe that lay in front of her but she could kick or throw or dunk the hell out any ball. She saw her sister ride a bike and jumped on one at 3 and sped off: the lump on her head was so huge, even my mother gasped. She was doing wheelies in a year. 

She doesn't scream and cry for hours now, but she has attitude that still breaks me. She can be sweet and pie and chocolate but she isn't anyone's chump and she lets me know. She will not be unheard or unseen and she will slam doors and fight back. She scratches and pinches her sister and hurls angry words at me and her dad. When she wants something, she gets it: the Principal's Award, the spot on the team, the last ice cream bar in the freezer. She is passion in every way.  She turns on a dime.

She came home today with her ear-flapped hat tucked down to her eyebrows, eyebrows that are barely visible, as pale as they are. Her clunky boots kept perfect time with her thundering self and even after she shed them, her thump-thumpness through the house made us who were waiting for her feel happy. She was here with us again: her fat lips and crooked teeth, her raspy hummingbird voice, her twinkle and wink, her crabby and happy on a knife's edge, none of us ever knowing who she will be today. But she was home and we liked it.

She kissed me smack on the lips, leaving gobs of spit behind. She waltzed down the hall with her brother, arm and arm on her cue, to the bath she fills up and indulges The GFYO with, because he loves "swimming" with her; she'd prefer a shower or better yet, dirt. She put on the pajamas she will wear to school tomorrow and hugged me all hot and steamy and snarled-haired. She slurped ice cream and cuddled her sister, wrapping around her like a kitten, and covered her eyes when the couple on TV kissed. 

I knew her before she was born so sometimes I wonder if I dreamed her into reality. But even though I am her mother and she is seven and I can still tell her to go to bed and clean it up and correct that part of the homework, and even though she will do it, I know their is no part of me that has any real claim to her. I know there is nothing I have done beyond the science of it to make her up: she is who she will be, a product of me and him for sure, but a person all her very own. A person who showed up here for us and for me -- my freckled miniature, my better wish, a lesson in my own futility: Her.