to my daughter
March 10, 2016 § 2 Comments
On your eleventh birthday, you proudly proclaimed yourself eleventeen. Younger sister to a teenage brother, it sometimes seems you were born assuming an equality of age while simultaneously performing a playful demonstration of the very youth you feigned ignorance of experience.
I can remember elementary days, picking up your brother from school while you chased ahead of me in full costume. Parading after the older children with a single-minded purpose of falling into line and assuming a place in their day.
You were fearlessly bold before you were old enough to understand unkindness, to feel different or doubtful. Over the past few years you’ve sometimes struggled to be seen authentically amid the familiarity of sameness.
This year, as you introduced yourself to strangers and set about the task of self in a new setting, I marveled at confident expressions that hinted at your playful nature and creative spirit. When others might have sought the invisibility of a crowd, you moved comfortably in your costume of self.
Bulky orange headphones, outdated for their size, draped at your neck or a borrowed baseball cap worn backwards; torn jeans and weathered boots; sentimental accessories and clothes that are a hodgepodge of comfort and convenience. Just this side of pretty with a carefully casual disinterest in compliments.
I have a sneaking suspicion you will soon outgrow this phase in much the same way you ceased to chase neighborhood sidewalks in stained princess gowns brandishing your brother’s forgotten sword in trade for an astronaut costume with pearls.
Even as I cautiously redirect your attention from a new question of feathers and hair color, I’m secretly smitten by the riddle of style that has become reassuringly familiar for its predictable chaos that is your own.
Love, Mom
scribblechic 
Ah, the blossoming of self, each phase attempting to follow something, only to find the originality in ourselves a little more in each journey.
The journey of a mother Marie, to see those changes unfold 🙂
Luckily she’s less likely to follow a trend and more likely to get caught up in a character. It’s been a blast watching her sense of self translate into different expressions. Wouldn’t change a thing!