“I have a limited amount of random knowledge,” my daughter stated when she was asked if what type of dogs werewolves were. The asker is 8, my daughter is 12. This produced an explanation by my daughter of how werewolves were probably more live “wolves” than actual domesticated “dogs” as we know them. The 8 year old replied, “You are just confusing me, but I know Santa’s not real.” I love being a witness to these conversations. Twenty minutes before we picked up her friend and the 8 year old sister we passed a sign posted on a business billboard that read “Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it,” a quote generally attributed to the Dalai Lama. My daughter’s first comments included “Well, it isn’t really success if you didn’t have to do anything to get it, right?” I followed this thought with one of my own, “If you have to sacrifice more than was ethical, moral, or financially possible to achieve, was it really success after all?”
I love the days we have these conversations. I forget sometimes she is 12 going on 40. She amazes me with her insight, clarity and often whimsical sarcasm. I treasure the comments she makes about my road rage driving “Mom, do you really thing that insane woman can hear you?” when she sees me ranting back at the lady who just cut me off in traffic and flipped me off as if it was my fault. I love the answer to the question I asked about whether or not it was obvious that I had lost 30 lbs. “No, I really can’t tell” was the reply. But the best by far this week was “Thank God, they left out Transformer Heaven in this movie, I don’t think I could have handled it a second time!” A true movie critic in the making.
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