Wednesday, August 29, 2007

"I do it myself!"

As mentioned time and time again, my daughter is the most independent thing I've ever encountered. There is nothing you can do for her that she wouldn't rather do herself.

This morning when getting ready for school, her mom asked her to get her shoes on. Her normally thorn-in-her-side brother displayed a rare act of kindness and retrieved them from the other side of the room for her. Well, he may as well have poured her Cheerios on the floor from her reaction to this. "I get my shoes!," she said to him before letting the tears fall and the anger fly. Now I got to remind and reassure Joshua that what he did was nice and calm Ari down and get her to thank her brother all while watching the clock as their mom and I tried to keep the morning routine on schedule.

She's two-years-old and the apple of my eye, and I see turbulent times ahead. I also see a wonderfully self-reliant young woman in the making, but the road ahead looks to be terribly stubborn with very few caution signs along the way. This stubborn independence of hers (that I really do admire) is going to confuse a lot of well-meaning friends and samaritans.

Fast forward to an imagined wedding day: My wife and I are watching her on this most beautiful of days in our much loved daughter's life. She's standing tall and looking into the eyes of the luckiest of young men. She loves him with all of her heart and he's on top of the world as he's about to marry the girl of his dreams. But then he makes that mistake that I saw coming in a vision so many years before. He takes the ring and places it onto her finger. She draws back and gives him a look. "I do it myself!," she reprimands as she slides it off and then puts it right back on with a twist.

The ceremony continues as I nudge my wife gently. "I told you," I whisper.

6 comments:

Leesa said...

I've been called Stubborn recently..
so that's a good trait? ;)

Anonymous said...

My ex-girlfriend's daughter was like that from the age of 2 to well, now, and she's 6.

Back then everything was "My got it." "My do it myself." Sometimes it made you smile, sometimes it made you want to kick her. I never did. Not hard anyway.

The Middle Child said...

My heart smiles for you!

Kristina and Ingo said...

I absolutely loved this post. It is of the happy!

BeckEye said...

I remember being like that as a kid. Always yelling, "I can do it, I can do it!" Those episodes usually always ended in some type of injury.

Cup said...

My niece has been like that since she was six months old. She's now twenty, and, yep, she can do it herself. But she's the coolest kid I've ever known.