It has been a minute or two since large crowds made visions of the very worst nightmares dance through my head. "Come here, Alexis," I would say. "You have to hold my hand when it's busy like this."
And she would work her way through a sea of people to oblige, but begrudgingly.
The girl has an independent streak a mile wide, even as she spends her every waking moment trying to crawl back in my uterus. Heck, she spends a lot of her sleeping moments doing exactly that. Still, she wants to explore the world and she wants to do it a few feet behind or ahead of me. She clings and she clings and she clings, but she also puts more and more distance between herself and me.
There is no doubt that she doesn't need me to guide her through her every day.
She walks to her bus stop alone. If I peak out the door as she skips down the sidewalk, she'll yell back, "Mom! Go to work!"
Alexis closes the door to her bedroom every morning and acts as if I have committed a horrible sin if I walk into her room. "Mom! I'm getting dressed!" she'll say. She doesn't need my help. She doesn't want my help.
"Why are you here?" she'll ask between dance classes. She wants me to drop her off and leave so that she can be her own person for two hours as she dances and tumbles with her friends.
Yet as we walk through a crowded store, she slips her still chubby-knuckled hand into mine. Old habits die hard and she has spent all of her walking days being forced to hold my hand in a crowd.
But still.
Each time we're in a crowded place and I reach out my hand to grab hers, I hold my breath. The day is nearing when she won't slip her hand into mine and the day is nearing when I won't be able to say that she HAS to.
The day is nearing that she will be able to navigate a crowd without me, and that is when I will know she isn't a baby any more.
I hold my breath. I'm grateful every time those chubby little fingers intertwine with mine.
