Mother of the *&^%$.@! Year
My seven year old daughter broke my heart yesterday.
Apparently, she’d been looking through old videotapes and found one with a bunch of her baby footage. I have no idea why we’ve never watched it with her. Life has been much more hectic since her little sister was born, almost four years ago. A “no excuse” excuse, but that’s all I got.
Anyway, she told me she had just watched her baby video and that it’d made her cry.
(This is the same kid who, at age three, the first time I let her watch WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, wept at the end. I turned to her, expecting smiles, and saw silent tears rolling down her pudgy little cheeks. When I asked why she was crying, she said, “I’d just really like to go there one day.”)
So, her own baby video made her cry.
Because it made her feel old.
My seven year old daughter feels old, because we were all huggy and kissy and lovey with her in the video and she doesn’t get enough of that anymore. (This I intuited, but she agreed.) The whole “Munchie doesn’t get enough attention because Malfoy is sucking up all our time” issue is not new.
One night, about a month ago, I hugged Munchie and -- instead of letting go -- we just stood like that for a while.
Hugging... Rocking...
And my tears came.
And I sniffled and told her, “I don’t hug you enough. I’m sorry about that.”
And dammit, she was fucking sniffling, too.
She’s seven years old. She should have been pushing me away to go read or play or beat up her sister. Anything but clinging to me like she loves me so desperately, there’s nowhere else she’d rather be. What have I done to deserve this?!
She’s such a great kid. Funny and clever and smart and (god help us) a beautiful, leggy blonde (don’t ask me how that happened.) Guess I must’ve done something right along the way. Gotta try to figure out what that was and keep doing it.
And more of those great hugs, too. Definitely more of those...
Apparently, she’d been looking through old videotapes and found one with a bunch of her baby footage. I have no idea why we’ve never watched it with her. Life has been much more hectic since her little sister was born, almost four years ago. A “no excuse” excuse, but that’s all I got.
Anyway, she told me she had just watched her baby video and that it’d made her cry.
(This is the same kid who, at age three, the first time I let her watch WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, wept at the end. I turned to her, expecting smiles, and saw silent tears rolling down her pudgy little cheeks. When I asked why she was crying, she said, “I’d just really like to go there one day.”)
So, her own baby video made her cry.
Because it made her feel old.
My seven year old daughter feels old, because we were all huggy and kissy and lovey with her in the video and she doesn’t get enough of that anymore. (This I intuited, but she agreed.) The whole “Munchie doesn’t get enough attention because Malfoy is sucking up all our time” issue is not new.
One night, about a month ago, I hugged Munchie and -- instead of letting go -- we just stood like that for a while.
Hugging... Rocking...
And my tears came.
And I sniffled and told her, “I don’t hug you enough. I’m sorry about that.”
And dammit, she was fucking sniffling, too.
She’s seven years old. She should have been pushing me away to go read or play or beat up her sister. Anything but clinging to me like she loves me so desperately, there’s nowhere else she’d rather be. What have I done to deserve this?!
She’s such a great kid. Funny and clever and smart and (god help us) a beautiful, leggy blonde (don’t ask me how that happened.) Guess I must’ve done something right along the way. Gotta try to figure out what that was and keep doing it.
And more of those great hugs, too. Definitely more of those...
posted by Julie O'Hora at 11:03 PM
1 Comments:
Thanks for the comments and the link, Warren. I'll return the favor when I recover from the four days of sleep deprivation a/k/a the Austin Screenwriters' Conference. :)
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