Seven

My daughter turned seven this morning with much less effort on my part than her birth required. In fact there was no effort, besides a late night scramble to get some gifts together and wrapped. I didn't have to do anything....she just....got older.

She's so proud of turning seven as though she has spent the last seven years waiting for this birthday. Actually she has her birthdays planned out years in advance so I guess she has been waiting a long time.

My daughter is desperate to grow up. The world is full of all these things she has to wait to do and to her that is a huge injustice. She is often uninterested in childhood things and spends lots of time pining for the things she is going to do "someday". No amount of me telling her that she will have plenty of time to do those things and she should enjoy the endless summer of childhood while she can makes any dent. 

Her first baby tooth has started to wiggle. I am almost certain it is the same tooth that was the first to come in. She likes to show off how much it wiggles and gives me reports hourly. "Look mom, now it wiggles even more!" I dutifully examine her little finger as it wiggles the tooth back and forth and congratulate her while whistfully remembering the pain of that tooth chomping down on my breast. I'd go back there in a heartbeat, pain and all, for the then unappreciated joy of of those first months. Just us. 

Somewhere along the way, around the time her brother was born two years later, I lost my baby girl. She changed from the sunny toddler with the easy smile. No longer would she fall down, get back up and dust herself off. She was friendly and outgoing. The smiles 
have been replaced with ugly grimaces. She is shy of talking to people and of going places on her own. The sunshine, like the song we used to sing, went away. She closes the heavy curtains in her room which used to be the sunniest place in the house. She prefers it dark.
She takes everything so hard, and to the worst imaginable (to her) place. And she routinely refers to herself as stupid. A word that has never left my mouth (in regard to her or anyone else) and could not be farther from the truth. I know negativity, depression, quick tempers, and a tendency to worry first and most runs in my family. I know the dark side of myself and I work on it all the time. More and more as I get older. So why, during the time of my being the least like that I've ever been, has my daughter become a condensed and saturated version of the worst of me?

I remind myself, she's a Leo. She's choleric. She's very smart. Her father is melancholic...and a former and now closet goth. But I worry, as is my way. I worry that she has inherited the negative traits in our genes and behavior but has not taken notice of  the positive changes and decisions I make. How I turn myself around when I'm thinking dark thoughts. How I calm myself down, cheer myself up, and shoulder on with what needs doing. If children are such sponges of modeled behavior why does my sponge of a daughter only soak up the sad, bad, and angry