I gave my daughter my hips and legs, why not give her my introversion too.

I can see myself in her little body when she walks away from me on her way to the side of the pool for her swim lessons. And I can see myself when she closes the door to her room, turns on the light near her bed and sets out all her horses in a row. She says that she needs to be alone.

Being alone recharges her. I am recognizing that.

She’s all emotion and passion and testing the limits right now. I can hardly remember being seven…

What I liked.
What I felt.
What made me feel normal.
How I needed to be by myself.

I know that I need to do what I can to clear the trail for her, cut through the brush so that she can walk as unencumbered as possible through the growing-up of her. Part of that, I am realizing, is very much what I need in order to feel normal: being alone.

I don’t get charged by being in groups (like my life-of-the-party husband). It exhausts me. I love people but I love them more in smaller doses. Coffee with one friend. Three of us at the movies or spa. Running in the morning with another girlfriend. This is where I do best.

And then I need to be alone to remember who I am.

I can see this in my own daughter. She plays hard, she wants so much to be liked in groups but it tires her out just trying to keep it together all day at school. So today, when she didn’t want to sit with me but go and dream with her dolls, I let her. I protected her privacy by taking her sometimes-meddling little sister and read to her in another room so she wouldn’t bother her. I waited until she was ready to emerge, charged and ready to be a part of our afternoon.

And she did, this time reminding me who I am.

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.