Grown-up

(Blog Challenge #3: When did you know you were a grown-up?)

You would think I would have realized I was a grown-up in moments like these:

*Pushing Eloise out of my pachina. (Am I obsessed with child-birth? Maybe. I just can’t stop marveling.)

*Doing the Heimlich maneuver on one of my preschool students. (Little turkey had swallowed a penny. Thank God, I’d gotten CPR certified the week before. The Heimlich is different for little ones, people. Take a class if you don’t know how to do it.)

*Signing my name on the marriage license that legally committed Brakes to me forever. (Yikes!)

But in all honesty, in each of those circumstances, I was faking. I am no more grown-up now then I was when I felt oh-so-grown-up as a hot-shot sixteen year-old tooling around in a beat-up convertible. In fact, I used to worry that my boss would one day realize he’d hired a child to shape young minds, or that it would suddenly dawn on Brakes that his wife spent an inordinate amount of time day-dreaming and playing house.

Now, I don’t worry so much; I quit my job (so no boss to concern myself with) and it occured to me that Brakes knew exactly whom he was getting when we wed. I am the girl who throws tantrums during long-car rides, thinks her birthday lasts the whole month, secretly still believes in Santa, and loves him with the intensity that only the un-jaded can manage. It is okay that Brake’s wife is still not a grown-up because he has been a grown-up since he was born. With my imagination and his sense of responsibility, Eloise should make out just fine!

(Oh, no! The above sounds awfully introspective; is that the wisdom of years talking? Nah! I’d better go though; it's way past my bedtime.)

Here I am with my favorite playmates:

Gas of Green Gables

(Challenge #2; Watcha reading?)

One of the greatest legacies my parents passed down to me was a love of reading.  From my earliest memories I can recall snuggling with my parents reading Good Night, Moon and The Sweet Pickles books.  My parents didn’t just love to read with us kids; my dad always had a paperback in his back pocket and my mom has authored several children’s books.   Reading was and is an important part of our family culture.  This is tradition I really look forward to passing down to Eloise.  (Who, by the way, was named after my favorite childhood story-book character ever,  Eloise from the Plaza.) 

Upon confirming that Eloise was a girl, my mind began to race with all the possibilities our life together held.  I pictured tea-parties, and father-daughter dances.  I imagined spa days and whispered secrets.  I began compiling a list of things I wanted to share with my daughter; topping the list was L.M. Montgomery’s Anne books.  After my Nonnie gave me the classic Anne of Green Gables for my birthday one year, I quickly read the rest of the series.  These books provided so much, “scope for imagination,” and they truly helped me appreciate beauty; beauty in nature, people, and in the written word.  I read these books almost every summer until I went to college and now, guess what?  I am reading them again!  As I rock my sweet baby to sleep every night I share with her the beautiful prose so artfully spun by my favorite author.  The gentle cadence of the fanciful words accompany Eloise as she  drifts off to sleep.  I know she is too little to follow the story and her vocabulary comprehension is likely limited to “more moomoos?” and “There’s Daddy!”   But I believe that some part of her subconscious is soaking up the essence of the words and that their special magic sweetens her dreams.