Our eldest daughter turned six today. The birthday countdown finally hit blast off! today after months of discussion and planning. Her party is tomorrow, which thankfully curtails the extension of festivities beyond one more day.
In her defense, I'll admit that when I was a child, my parents had to initiate a rule that there would be no talk about my birthday until after Christmas each year. My birthday is February 4. My daughter comes by her birthday diva-ness honestly.
She's six. Six is a solid number. Her age by fingers requires two hands now. Accordingly, our petite firstborn is growing. She's spent the summer eating voraciously and mastering new skills like riding a "two-wheeler" and diving into the pool.
The entropy of independence is becoming more apparent as well. She is gradually migrating from our center, needing reassurance less, and requiring it differently, when she does. Where she used to seek physical refuge, she now requests a more intellectual explanation that there's nothing to worry about.
I'm beginning to recognize that our first grader has her Own Life. By Own Life, I mean to say, aspects of her and her doings to which I am not privy--or not invited to observe. What an amazing leap in development happens between one's child pleading, "Mommy, Mommy, come see; let me show you; look at my..." and the shrugging, "I don't know when/where I got that/did that/learned that/heard that...but yeah, it's mine."
Earlier this summer as I was purging lesser peaks in the mountain o' papers our daughter generates in Her Office, I stumbled up on some unfamiliar writing. It didn't look exactly like her handwriting, and it didn't sound like her usual missives. So I didn't think much about it until a week later, when I found a similar script in her notebook. The best way to characterize these "passages" is to say they approximate...cheesy song lyrics. Really badly misspelled song lyrics.
I timidly asked my daughter (fearful of embarrassing her and thereby extinguishing her compulsion to pen power ballads) if these were, indeed, her "songs?" written here and there. And her confirmation gave me a funky twist in my stomach like I had just read her diary.
Maybe because they're love songs. Where is this material coming from? Beats me. Overexposure to Disney Princess Songs is partially responsible, I'm sure. My own penchant for melodramatic poetry might be a genetic clue.
Here's a sampling (with spelling partially edited for clarity):
It looks like your dad (dead?)
But it looks like you
I like it the more you say
that is sounding just like you
I'll see you like you
It is just like you look like bfore!
I will see you speedin out all your love
You can allways hear love!
and:
When are you gona save me
When I capsher your love in my hart
When are you gona love me
Just when gona part go and capsher the hart
Just go and capsher the love
Go and capsher the...
Everyday just go and capsher the love!
and:
I will see you floing in the wind
Today I am seeing you flo
Days and days it will do!
You see me floing around to!
Youll see to
You see me floen my love around
These songs, they're funny; they're bewildering; they're a little bit poignant, too.
Oh, our little girl in the funky long socks. You, verging between small child and someone you are able to define by yourself: Happy birthday. We love you so very, very much.
3 comments:
Oh, I got teary-eyed reading these lyrics, not only because I think it is truly amazing that she is showing an interest in and talent for poetry so early (and with such maturity), but also because my elder guy is possibly only a year and a half away from this stage -- the independent stage, that is; I don't think he has a penchant for poetry. The younger guy, though, has fashioned such phrases as "if you don't give me something to drink, my stomach will go to war" (and others that, sadly, I cannot recall right now); he's been full of edgy song lyrics.
Wow, she has a lot to say. She seems way beyond 6.
Those are freaking fantastic. Absolutely love it!!
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