Every morning, Vivian gets up around 6:30, plugs in her iPod, and blares me out of a dead sleep with Rhianna, or Lady Gaga, or Beyonce, or something else high pitched and treble laden. Mostly I can ignore it, covered as it is by the white hum of my room fan, and the syrupy lure of 20 minutes of more sleep. I hear bowls, or toast, glasses and humming. Flat, off key 8 year old singing. (I just downloaded her the new Lady Gaga album, so this is only going to get worse. I won’t get Judas out of my head for weeks now.)
This morning was another just like this, full of the usual. Probing for dinner ideas. Packing lunches someone might eat. Finding the “right” long sleeved shirt for Ros. Convincing Vivian that yes, you DO need to brush your hair and that soon her friends will comments on the greasy hair rocker look she’s been sporting. Most morning also tend to include brief lessons in “why you cannot wear THAT shirt with THOSE pants.” Variations on this theme include leggings not being pants, holes and stains mean it cannot be worn off the property, and real waistbands won’t kill you.
So color me surprised this morning to see my daughter resplendant in beige, pink and brown culottes and a plain pink shirt. She looked pretty my tomboy! She looked, frankly, quite lovely.
And so grown up. It seems like she’s sprouted wings and stretched these past few months, growing lanky, limber. She’s 8 so soon that I’ve taken to calling her 8, because frankly she’s always been older. But now, her body betrays me, and when my bones creak, hers rejoice and I hear a tsking noise in the backround, that reminder, voices when she was just a baby.
The relative nature of time which causes me to press a silent “fuck you” into the abyss directed at Einstein.
My eldest daughter, my baby girl, she grows too fast. I can catch wind before I can catch her, flying past me without thought. I let her though, I know I must. This is my place, the soft place to land, with limits and terms. I must cast her forth, with hope and beauty.
Most days she’s cranky and snotty and laughing at farts. But then there are days, days like today when I see the woman I have brought forth, the mother to be, the someday wife, the pride in flesh I have wrought.
And proud I am.
Spin Me I Pulsate 
I like it.
Yes…somewhere along the way, the Bee turned into a seventh grader. With the attendant middle school attitudes and an abundance of self-reliance. How on earth did that time pass by so quickly?