Crossroads

I sit here thinking about today's post and I can't help but recall the old song, "Girl, You'll be A Woman Soon." While the lyrics don't at all mesh with what I'm thinking (I'm not a boy pining for a young girl, after all), the title just won't let me be.

Our daughter, our baby, has mere months left before she leaves behind her safe life at the K-8 school she has attended since Kindergarten. She will be in the scary world of High School next fall and while it may not be scary to her, it scares the hell out of her father and me. We won't be two minutes away from the school any longer. There won't be faculty and office staff there who have known her since she was 5 and have always looked out for her. There will be older friends with cars and other temptations, teachers who don't know the girl that we know inside out. There will be pressures that even she can't begin to imagine at this point in her life no matter how worldly-wise she thinks she is.

She is our baby, our surprise child. Let's be honest, after our two boys reached the ages of 15 and 9, and the husband and I were 41, a little girl wasn't at all the retirement we were planning in just a few short years. We have maintained for all of her 13 years now that she is a blessing, a gift, and we mean it wholeheartedly. I can't imagine our lives without her. She's tough. She began life 8 weeks premature, and weighed in at a whopping 3 pounds 7 ounces. They called her "the dancer" in the NICU unit because she never stayed still; they had to swaddle her just so that she could rest and conserve her energy. Her love of dance has always been there and no I won't embarrass her by telling the "table dancing" story from when she was 2, but it was a classic moment in our family story bank.

She has applied for several magnet schools in the area, for their drama programs. She has been rejected for one and we are still waiting to hear from another, but this morning we learned that she has been accepted into a magnet program for Bio-Medical and Environmental Studies. Pre-med. While her father and I blinked in disbelief and laughed, I can't even print what her response was. She applied and attended the open house because it would look good on her records. Even looking over her grades, they still want her. Go figure. And I don't mean that in a negative way at all, I'm just being honest here.

Yes, she can do anything she puts her mind to and I have no doubt she could do this, too, if she sets her mind to it. She is our child, she's brilliant. And talented. And beautiful. And funny. And sensitive. And---

And she's growing up way too soon.