TWELVE-YEAR OLD GIRL

               She is twelve years old, wears Under Armor shorts instead of Umbros—a difference of brands and icons across generation’s change.  Her brown hair holds hues of red that express daily ever more to her mother’s, and when weather and air are right, they wave naturally without effort, care, or work.

               She is smart, caring, funny, and kind.  She is generous and thinks of others; and as her father, I gaze and wonder if I am looking on beginnings to the woman she’ll become. 

               She is empathetic, feels, and does for others without asking or prompt.  She is shy too, until she learns and becomes comfortable, and I see this difference from home and then when we are out; when with family and friends, and when amongst scene and crowd of greater unknowns.

               She laments endings, goodbyes, and often thinks ahead before their happening.  She cries at goodbyes to visits with family that lives away.  She cries to thoughts of days when, one day, another will be absent; and when these make her sad, I remind her that the time and sadness are not yet; and we should appreciate our times and moments while they are not lament before their happening. 

               We cannot change endings and goodbyes that will and must come, but we can choose to love and live fully the times and moments we are gifted.

               I tell and teach her this for I have learned from my own ways; sadness that need not be, for its happening and reason is not yet; and life has taught that gratitude and made memories are far greater company in absence and mind than a sadness for reason that has not yet come.

               Last week, she cleaned her great grandfather’s refrigerator.  It was her own willing and desire to do after a Sunday at his home.  Last night, she hosted him for dinner.  It was her prompting and idea—not mine—and I was grateful to be a helper in making it happen.

               She makes him desserts—cookies and brownies and anything for a sweet tooth treat.  Our family has an unspoken belief that little sweets savored do indeed bring easy and simple pleasures to days; and we enjoy them often though, I like to think, absent excess.

               She loves volleyball and basketball; and she is proud when she tells my own father that she worked out with the A-Team in open gym practices.  She is competitive, wants to win, but has grace, too, when efforts fall short of aim. 

               There is a much to be said for those inherent of such grace.  Life is a balance.  There are days we win.  There are days we don’t; and we need both the attitude of spirit and grace of compassion to balance: to compete at all, and then to rise, will again, when we fall short.

               She still wants me in her life, and maybe the day is near when her priorities will change. 

               Still, I will do as I tell and not lament what is not yet.  I will choose, instead, to love our time, this life era and age, enjoying moments and memories as they live. 

               I am proud of who she is and wonder in hope on who, one day, she may become.  I wonder if there isn’t a place and piece in every woman that never outgrows this age: youthfulness, goodness, the beginning expression to becoming of a woman.

               I don’t know.  She’s my only daughter: but I love her—as she is, as she’s been, and who—in future—she’ll become; even if, in part, she is forever to me that smiling twelve-year old girl in Under Armor shorts. 

               I am blessed to be piece and part in her life.