She's Growing Up

Here is a photo of G from this past spring. That's my friend Kevin's cat. We were at his house taking care of Jinx while he was away. G also dropped off some Girl Scout cookies with a friendly note reminding him to make sure he gets his payment in:



G is a funny kid and has the best sense of humor. I also will add that she has excellent, distinctive taste and can accessorize like....someone who can accessorize really well. I'm not quite comfortable saying my daughter can do anything like a motherfucker.

I was looking at some really cool Barbie dolls that my friend made into Tegan and Sarah dolls for her daughter's birthday and thought of the last time that G had asked me for a doll. She was never into Barbies she is more of a stuffed animal type of gal, but she threw me off completely.

This is because my daughter's childhood experiences and my own are very opposite. Not completely polar opposite. She is not the millionaire child of the king of the world and I didn't grow up the child of a homeless crack whore, but there are some things about me that were very, very different from her at the age of 9.

About 6 months ago, G came to me and asked me for some money from her First Communion that I had put in the bank for her several months before. She said that she wanted an "American Girl" doll. I was shocked. I thumbed through the file in my brain that consisted of my childhood experiences and said, "Aren't you a little old for dolls?" in a puzzled manner. I thought to myself that seeing that she was 8, she would want to be smoking cigarettes soon and would be asking for a lighter or a cheap cigarette trip to New Hampshire. I was 9 when I started.

Needless to say she got the doll. I'm happy that she is growing up much MUCH slower than I am, as are her siblings. It is crazy though, when I look at my children and think of who I was and what I was doing at their age. It makes me happy that they don't have to deal with a lot of the shit, and it makes me a little sad too, because looking back, my childhood wasn't too bad, but there were still things in it that I would never wish to be in my children's lives (or any other kid's for that matter) and that makes me a bit sad.

Sorry for that last downer. It is a very cloudy morning. Off to a 16 hour shift. I hope it's not a shift from Hell.