tulips | Red Boots

Given that I only have one daughter, I like to think that I know her pretty well. One daughter, three sons. I like to think that I know them all pretty well, but her especially. Because the two of us are the Girl Power in our testoterone-heavy family. We are a natural duo a lot of the time: she runs errands with me, we get our nails done, go shopping on rare occasions.

She is as boisterous as her brothers, has water balloon fights and nerfgun wars with them, eats as much as they do, and watches whatever they’re watching at full volume (I’m pretty sure they’ve all blown their hearing by now) but every few days their loud, intensely wolfpack boy-energy overwhelms her as much as it does me, and the two of us retreat. Either alone, or together.

She keeps the door of her bedroom closed. Whether she’s in it or not. She says it’s because she doesn’t want Pretzel the dachshund to shuffle in and pee on the fluffy cream rug, but I rather think it’s to keep her she-domain to herself. When she’s nowhere to be found, I quietly push open that bedroom door, and see her dark head bent over her desk, where she’s drawing or making a card for someone or writing a story.

During her seven years with me, I’ve come to know that the only fruit she really likes is pears, and that she loves art and writing. That she wants to be an actress and go to college in New York City. She is shy but social. Good at karate and mediocre at ballet. I know she loves clothes that feel soft. She cuts out the tags because they itch her neck. When she reads to herself she actually says each word out loud in a soft, barely audible undertone that is not a whisper. I know that she loves to take care of her little brother, but is almost always irate and exasperated with the one just above her and a little in awe of the one above him.

But sometimes she reveals herself to me in ways so full of unexpected wonder I feel like I’m meeting her for the first time.

Like when she told me during my library shift at school today that she’s checking out a picture book because she is reading two chapter books at home – I had no idea. Or when she exploded into uncontrollable laughter watching the little guy inhale my skin (he has some kind of olfactory connection with me) – it surprised me that she found it so funny, and her laughter was so completely uninhibited that soon all three of us were hysterical. She makes witty comments now and again, in a voice so dry and deadpan if I’m not watching her face and her lips move, I would miss them. She is not a jokester like her brothers, and it seems out of character yet so perfect when she delivers these one-liners.

The other day she read my post about Dutch Tulips. And she said, “Mom, I like how you have the word ‘tulips’ at the end of the first paragraph, and then you end the whole thing with the word ‘tulips’.”

I stared at her in wonder while my heart skipped many beats and my brain tried to figure out who this girl, with the green-gray eyes and smattering of freckles across her nose, was exactly. Her intuitive insight into an apparently insignificant detail seemed far beyond her seven short years of life. Because of course it’s not an insignificant detail. It’s so significant. And deliberate. It’s how I tied the piece together, and I made a conscious choice to use the word there. And again there.

My little girl has a killer sense of humor. Can read two books at once, and knows her limits. And is developing an intuition for the written word that she is just discovering. And so am I.

My girl and I – we’re still getting acquainted. I hope the “getting” part lasts forever.

Getting Acquainted by OPI

Daffodils and paperwhites. Freesia and wisteria. Purple, white and blue hygrangeas bursting on bushes. Jasmine – my favorite, sweetly scenting the breezes. And tulips.

tulips_white Hundreds of them, all over town. A floral sunrise of yellow, orange and pinky-red. Deep inky purple and purest white, tall and properly proud – they’re always the most elegant, those two, especially when standing together.

I’m a Spring Soul. I think it’s serendipity that I moved to the northern hemisphere where the season I was born into is now Spring. It heralds new beginnings, promises light and sunshine, colors are shyly showing themselves and the soft air seeps into my skin and swirls around my bones, gently warming me up from the inside out.

But it’s those springful smells that soothe my soul. Heady jasmine that always makes me smile and tear, tugging the nostalgic strings of my heart where my favorite South African memories live. Wisteria that wafts over me in a cloud of purple when I walk by the Rockridge library, and bunches of fragrant freesia I buy at Trader Joe’s – both take me back to long walks on campus with my best friend, another Spring Soul. She taught me that wisteria is called wisteria, and we would give each other freesia bouquets of yellow and white to fill the jars in our dorm rooms. Her birthday is in the southern hemisphere Spring – where she lives.

We barely had a winter here in California – the sun shone all through December and January, there was no rain, and despite a deluge of water this past week, the snowpack is still dangerously low.

But Spring still sprung. With every seasonal symptom. Color and light and bees and flowers and vibrant greens everywhere. Softly soothing smells. And tulips.