Young Lady

Young Lady is the spitting image of me - my replay button stuck when I hear her playing teacher, playing mother, playing general, expounding on subjects she knows nothing about and ordering people hither and fro.  I don't know how to press the pause button at times and it freaks me out.


The thing is, I know she will have a hard time ahead of her if she continues to be so pontificating, so (s)mothering.  And I know that from very personal experience.


Like the time 7-year old me called 6-year old neighbor "honey" like the indulgent (s)mothering friend that I was, and 8-year old neighbor embarrassed me by asking me why I called her "honey" to which I promptly said "no I didn't" to which she responded "yes, you did."
Like the time I thought the two friends who had confided in me about what they didn't like in the other needed to clear the air so we could have peace, so diplomatic 13-year old me told each what the other thought and then arranged a Camp David (where I spent the rest of junior high in the outhouse).
Like the time college-aged me told my friend what I thought she should do with her life, using such persuasive arguments that she was forced to remain silent in order to escape the conversation, and then was left to be astonished that my excellent reasoning had not prevailed with her.


Oh college was a banner period for failed attempts to control.  Let's move on.


Actually let's skip right to present.  With a few years behind me, I have learned that what works for one person does not work for another.  At least not in the same way.  It's no good to try and control who they are, what they should do, and I certainly now realize my way is not better than theirs.  Okay, okay, it's still better, but at least I'm smart enough not to tell them I think so.


When we were walking home from school today, Young Lady's "amoureux" Ewan was walking along with us.  I mean, this kid is gorgeous - a smile from ear to ear, long straight blond hair that hangs in his big blue eyes, cool clothes and jaunty step even at tender the age of five.  You just know he's going to be a heart-breaker when he gets older.   (He had better be breaking someone else's heart).


He's a year younger than she is, but the class is split so fate threw them together.  He seems to like her and carries on a determined conversation with himself, his face partly turned in her direction.  He yells at the bigger girl he's walking with that he's not talking to her when she has the misfortune to say, "what?"  Young Lady is conscious of his every word although she smiles to herself and doesn't answer.  She marches confidently along in the power she exudes having worn her blue skirt that twirls.


Young Lady is beautiful too, bias aside.  She did not inherit my rounded arms, protruding belly, knocked knees or dull hair.  She got her father's athletic build with tiny wiry arms that looked beautiful today in a little white tee shirt with capped sleeves.  She has a long torso, elegantly set off by the swinging navy polka dot skirt and little ballet flats at the end of long slender legs.  She has thick blond hair and her own set of green eyes.  She's going to be a heart-breaker too (and can break anyone's heart she pleases).


But beauty will come to nothing if she cannot temper her tongue.  In the series Cranford that I'm re-watching (I'm such a sucker for classics), one woman advises another who expresses her fears at having no interesting conversation to catch a suitor, "Men do not care how well you talk, as they do how well you listen."  


I hope Young Lady will find her own pause button one day, and not care so much about what she has to say.  Or send her suitor's letter back to him with all the spelling mistakes underlined in red.  Or mock a suitor in front of his friends.  Or talk a suitor's ear off so successfully that his glazed regard only finds clarity in another girl crossing his line of vision.


Fortunately for Young Lady, she has time to learn all of things.  


"Ewan," she calls with a giggle.  "I burped!"