A Whole Other Path
I remember the weeks leading up to second grade vividly. The blistering sun, the days spent running around the trailer park, and what I would eventually recognize as the beginning of the end -- it all happened that summer. Cancer took its first female victim in my family that late summer. It started with my grandma Norma, and eventually trickled down through every woman. My aunt Susan, my mom ... it kept going.
But that's the summer it started.
I didn't understand the scope of it all because that was the summer I spent being a busy 7-year old. I visited my grandma in the nursing home. I rode my bike. I played in the sandbox. It was the summer I spent running around with the boys and constantly reenacting scenes from Star Wars because that's what kids did back in the late 80's.
Fun fact: I've never seen a Star Wars movie in its entirety. I don't have the attention span for it. I sure did insist I get to be Princess Leia, though.
That's about as girly as I got when I was 7. Let me play Princess Leia and I will happily spend the rest of my time making mud pies, kicking everyone's butt at tag, and and standing side-by-side with the boys as they made fun of the girls. I was one of them. I had no use for lace or the color pink or playing with dolls.
That was all far too .. ICK! for me.
As Alexis meanders through her final few weeks of summer vacation and prepares for second grade, she does it in an entirely different universe than I did. There are health concerns in the family, but she's certainly on a different planet than I was when it comes to understanding mortality. She has never tasted the skin-penatrating odor that can be found only in a nursing home, she's never seen the devastation cancer leaves behind, and she is blissfully unaware the impact terminal illnesses have on families.
Alexis' interaction with boys is mostly the pointing and shouting variety. She can hang with the boys just as well as I did, but she's not one of them. If there is anyone making fun of anyone, she's the kid left standing off to the side feeling sad because she doesn't like meanness.
She plays with dolls, she seeks out glitter, and OH MY GOODNESS THE KID LOVES CHEERLEADING.
I don't get it. I can't relate. It's totally and completely different from anything I would have ever wanted for myself.
I kind of love that she's her own person.
Monday, August 5, 2013
Reader Comments (3)
I know that sometimes the glitter and pink and cheerleading blows your mind, but I'm glad that this is her reality. And I'm glad she has you.
(I was the cheerleader making mud pies. I am so weird.)
OMGoodness, this is me & Jena to a tee! She is such a girly-girl: all dresses, and shinies, and frillies, and dolls, and GIRL.
I was all football and dirt and tree climbing and the only dolls I played with her GI Joe. She thinks I'm "tricking" her when I try to explain that I'm bad at playing dolls (her words) because I never played with Barbie when I was a kid.
When it comes to these things, we are foreign to each other. Finally! Another mom who gets it!
i love that you encourage her to be her and don't try to make her something she isn't.
<3