It has been . . . a week.
Between dance recitals and preschool graduations and looking across the table at dinner and seeing A Person, A Real Person capable of reaching the light switches and getting her own glass of water and solving actual problems, it has been . . . a week.
As we pull into the driveway, she asks, "Can I go play until dinner is ready?" With permission granted, she runs over to the neighbor's house and plays for an hour. AN HOUR. I don't watch her because we live in a place that makes constant supervision silly and, really, she's big enough to know where the boundaries are. She understands traffic and stranger danger and knows that if she wanders into the big field behind our house Very Bad Things will happen. Where once she followed me around as I made dinner and tried mercilessly to crawl back into my uterus, now she plays outside while I cook. Unsupervised.
We can no longer lob conversations over her head like a tennis ball over a net. Where once we could spell a word here and use a little Pig Latin there to render her clueless, now she's fully aware of what we're saying or spelling. She knows when she should admit it and when she should just remain quiet. She carefully listens to debates about where we should spend a sunny Saturday afternoon and only speaks up if she thinks we've fallen off of the path to fun. We can't even pass notes to one another because she can read and she will grab those notes out of our hands, giggling as she runs away. She even knows how to check text messages on my phone.
She's in a frantic rush to be an adult. Every day she tells me about the things that she's going to do when she's my age. She tells me how she's going to have six daughters and their names will be Jasmine, Cassie, Ella, Ashley, Jenna, and Lily. She's going to let them go to Build-a-Bear whenever they want. She's going to let them leave their Barbies all over the house. She's going to take them to Kennywood every single day. With a smile, I tell her I'm going to enjoy all of the paybacks she has coming her way and that I am NOT babysitting her six spoiled daughters. Mostly I think about how very grown-up she seems as she carefully weaves a future tale based on the reality that she wants for herself right now.
She likes to wake up super early so she can watch TV for a bit before school, a plot which only works out for her if she's dressed early enough. Somewhere between Then and Now she started appearing in the morning fully dressed, her teeth brushed, and her wild hair tamed. She started appearing fully ready to attack the world. She doesn't need me to help her get ready to attack the world.
She no longer needs me for a lot of things.
But she does still need me.
For now.