Today Cassidy and I spent an hour upstairs in my bathroom playing in my makeup. Her first school dance was tonight. Halloween. She went as Alice Cullen. The good vampire. The strong girl that is smart and funny and cute. The one girl in that entire silly make believe world that I’d actually WANT my daughter to look up to. She doesn’t look up to the brooding, melancholy girl that gets the guy at the end. She wants to be the one that is nice to everybody. That thinks about other people and what they want instead of her own needs.
This is the first time I’ve ever let her wear eyeshadow. And lipstick. And eyeliner. With glitter. We giggled as I curled her hair in just the right way and laughed uncontrollably when she smiled a wide grin into the mirror only to discover that she had red lipstick all over her teeth.
These fleeting little milestones that pass us by so quickly. I guess you could say that tonight she took a big step towards becoming her grown up self. The one that wears red lipstick and dances. With boys.
An hour later I found out that my grandma isn’t going to make it through the night. The grandma that used to let me dress up in her expensive clothes and dance around her fancy house. That drove me across the country just so I could see it. That taught me how to swim. Taught me how not to fall out of a hammock. That paid me a penny per acorn that I picked up off her driveway. The woman that wore the pants. That taught me that you are never too old to learn and it’s never too hard to try.
I love you, grandma. Forever.
