Tuesday April 28th, 2009
Sometimes I feel like I’m missing her seven-ness. As if her seven-ness is somehow walking right by without noticing me like an acquaintance: someone I desperately want to get to know but have trouble knowing what to say.
I know her. But what encompasses all of who she is right now? That is hard to decipher.
She is the dichotomy of no-baby-left beauty and childhood awkwardness — two halves in one body. She is all emotion and all apathy at once. All embarassment and all joy.
Its hard to help her balance her growing need for privacy and her lonlieness when her friends at school won’t play with her. She reads with the mind of a 10 year old, but she wants to read about 7 year old things: horses, baby sisters and different ways to braid her hair.
She writes in a diary, but she has little to say beyond what she had for lunch and dessert. She giggles at her father and still needs tickle-time, but the other half of the time she wants him to treat her like a grown-up. My seven-year-old isn’t too old to crawl in between us in bed some Saturday mornings, but needs her own alone time in her room more often these days.
Each year she gets older brings a different spin on girlhood to our lives. And if I battle just to understand her seven-ness from the outside, I’m sure she battles to understand it from the inside.
But I understand her. After all, I used to be that same embarrassed, private, diary-writing, giggling first grader. I used to be seven too.
Beautifully written. I still remember my seven-ness as well and hope that I still remember and understand it when my own baby girl reaches that age.
i remember seven-ness in emilie and noah. they were changing and awkward, but josie is a different kind of seven, a comfortable kind of seven. she seems comfortable in her seven skin. maybe it’s because she has a big bro and sis who have gone before her, maybe it’s because she is the baby. i want to be comfortable in my skin like that.
i had a diary when i was little. it makes me laugh to read it. to read my little girl thoughts.
look forward to our sevens year old playing together in 28 days!!
Sometimes it is really hard for me to read some of the posts you make about the girls…especially Hope. You remind me of how I miss out on so many sweet moments with her because I let my life get in the way and I too lose her “Seven-ness”
You write with clarity my dear that sometimes lets me see the bottom of the lake of life but at times hurts my eyes to look at.
Please keep doing what you do so well.
I refuse to believe she is seven. And so grown up. Your words are beautiful.
My 6-year old asks me all the time: “Mom, am I a big girl or a little girl?” I never know how to answer.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts about this. I just wanted to let you know I was pointing a few people your way…
…but this post from Sarah Markley (a “friend of a friend) really struck me as something all parents could relate to and should be aware of and reminded of.