My middle daughter was home from boarding school for the weekend looking for high schools to transfer to for her junior year next year. At 15, having survived an early and tumultuous initiation into adolescence, she is starting over, shedding skins, re-inventing herself. She is having the "second grow up" she predicted she'd need some day.
In her diary, at age 4, I recorded the first of her "What I Want to Be When I Grow Up" stories:
To Perri, (age 4) February 25, 1996
"Mommy, what do you want to be when you grow up?"
"A writer."
"Oh, I want to be a ballerina."
"Oh, that's nice."
"And in my second grown up, I'm going to be a fire trucker. . . No, a doctor. And in my third grow up, I'm going to be a dresser."
"A dresser? What's that?"
"Like Linda! A dresser!"
"Oh, a hairdresser! Sure."
"Mom, am I going to have a second grow up?"
"Sure."
I always liked her idea - "a second grow-up," and the instinctive awareness she possessed that assured her she could be all she wanted to be in life. Her imagination seemed to be fully loaded for the task, which she conceived of as very. . . challenging:
To Perri (age 5) October 17, 1997
"I know what I want to be when I grow up," you said.
"Oh?"
"A doctor, or a policeman. . ."
"Oh."
"I want to be a policeman 'cause they're like in charge of the world."
"Oh."
"Aren't they? What's the world mean? Is it the same as the Universe? Landon says it isn't. . . "
"Ummmm. . . "
"No, I know what I want. I want to grow up to be God!". . .
At 15, her imagination seems to be driving her into less omnipotent, more realistic, territory, such as being a music therapist or an entrepreneur.
Today, my daughter and the diary stories I keep for her reassure me that transformation is possible, and there are always new beginnings.
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