pierced ears

My daughter lays her gentle head carefully onto her pillow. She tucks her curls away from her tender little ears. She just had them pierced and the sight of her studs and their sparkly diamond gem-ness gives her a little thrill up the back of her neck. She doesn’t want any fabric to press against her sore red lobes. She lies there, still, in the night, breathing with a little excitement, thinking of her first day of school…it has come at last! I can see her spidery long lashes flutter against her soft cheeks that still hold some baby plumpness. Her smile curves with a secret that Mom will never know. Her tan is fading into the colour of honey. Her hands fold together across her wiry compact little girl chest like any ol’ Sleeping Beauty, no big deal. Her heart beats quick as a fawn, no drowsy inhale and exhale in any near future. She nods goodnight to the bears and tigers and dinosaurs: ferocious beasts all fuzzy and newborn and blinky and cute in her world, whispering, “sleep sleep sleep, nothing’s gonna get you, but time.”

This is how I am close to her tonight. Imagining. I’m still a Rocky Mountain range and four weeks away from holding her in my arms. She will be well into long division by then. She will falter with first words of French. She will be able to hit a tennis ball and be onto a fresh book of piano. She will have a new crush and a new best friend and a dent in her water bottle. She will have lost three tupperware lids and the glow in the dark brightness of her sneakers will be dulled to something manageable for the naked eye. She will look older. She will try five syllable words. She will have pierced ears.