Wednesday - October 07, 2009

 cocoon

 ... I'm talking about the "tween" in my life.  it's time to have that mom-to-daughter talk.  about the blessings (!) of puberty and adolescence that will affect her life sometime in the next couple years.

lucky imp - the blood won't scare her one bit.  ever since she was a baby she's had noosebleeds.  I don't recall ever seeing a school nurse until, ahem, college.  I'm not sure if that's because there weren't any or because i never needed to find out.  

but the nurse in my tween's school is an old friend to begin with and and now I get to keep up even better with her life than my facebook friends! thanks to frequent nurse office visits by my daughter, 

who i call "rerun" because she has a habit that actively resides in that huge murky cloud between endearing and annoying.  She does little newsflashes frequently, repeating aloud and with commentary, every detail of whatever just happened two seconds (or minutes, or hours, or daysmonthsyears) ago.  regardless of whether any real ears fall within range.  

she will be a fantastic talk show host some day because of that strange habit.  not to mention her incredible skills of analyzing social situations, her lack of timidity about gross stuff and her obsession with the bizarre.  

bloody noses are laundry problems.  one of my proudest accomplishments of motherhood is keeping somewhat of an image on her "pooh", wh o began as her crib quilt and grew to supreme lovey status.  despite his stubbornly identifiable shadow, pooh knows the scent of bleach.

if any brain mappers would like to scam an incredible sequence for a horror movie, they're welcome to my memory of stumbling into her room in the middle of the night... screaming infant in the dark.  a flip of the switch assaults the eyes with white light shredded by glistening bright red all over the white crib, papered walls, and lovely pastel bedding.  and yes, the baby too.  so much blood, such intense, inconsolable screaming... total nerve assault.

"think of it like this," owl explains, "it's like your vascular system is a tentacled tupperware beast.  for the first part of your life it was burping out of your nose.  you've been getting nosebleeds as you get older because your body is preparing to start bleeding out the other end.  luckily, the timing on this one is often more predictable than noosebleeds ever were!   

so it begins.  shopping in different departments, phone privileges, and the process of creating her own life.