My Growing Girl

We pulled into the library parking lot and got out of the car when Isabella ran back to her door saying, "hold on mommy, I just need to fix my hair." 

Fix her hair? When did this happen? 

She has a spray bottle full of water sitting by the mirror in her room, along with an array of hair brushes she regularly confiscates from the bathroom, my bedroom, and Isaac's room. She tells me she has to "flatten the fuzzies" and comes out of her room with the top portion of her hair slicked and definitely flattened. She doesn't let me brush it, and though her hair is thick, she only brushes the top portion. I told her her hair looked beautiful when she took one slim strand and wove it across the top of her head and pinned to the other side. 

She's always had a unique fashion sense. Mixing outrageous colors and patterns. Wearing impractical shoes for mud tromping and park playing. 

"Isabella, are you making mud pies?" 

"No! I'm making mud paint." 

And she proceeded to paint all of the porch railings. 

This is how she is creating her being. And I will not be the one to stop her. 

I love that she is bold and knows herself. When to do we lose our selves? When is the self taken by friends and influences and media? I don't know. I suppose it's a slow process. Maybe even beginning right now, as she wonders at taming the fuzzies on her head. But I know it is all part of the greater story and as the self is realized and reclaimed, the life-story is molded into being. For eight years she's been teaching me how to reclaim my self.  

I love that she says she likes walking a greater distance across the field and to the new location where I park the car and wait for her after school. In her words, "then I get to mumble anything I want, imagine anything I want, even talk really loud to myself because in school, we can't talk whenever we want." She runs outside in the morning to talk to "Mrs. Robin" and this makes me smile because I talk to birds, too, and why shouldn't we? 

Mary Oliver wrote in her poem, Invitation, 

Oh do you have time

  to linger

     for just a little while

          out of your busy

and very important day

  for the goldfinches

     that have gathered 

          in a field of thistles

for a musical battle, 

  to see who can sing

     the highest note, 

          or the lowest, [...]

My wish for her in this fast paced world, is to always "have time to linger". 

Oliver, Mary. "Invitation". Red Bird. Boston: Beacon Press, 2008. 18-19. Print.