Love Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry for Throwing up on You, Daddy.

   My youngest child, my younger daughter, my six-year-old, Rosemary, really surprised me about this time last year when she walked in my bedroom and showed me that she taught herself to tie her shoes. She had just turned five. She mastered this life skill on her own, with no instruction from me or anybody else. She then said she planned to teach my nine-year-old daughter to tie her shoes because, as she put it, 'it was time.' 

    Rose is a doer, a worker, she's independent. She takes things apart and puts them back together, or mostly back together. She may be the brightest child I've ever made. I made two before her, a supersonic aspie son who can make an algebra problem tremble, and a lovely, talented nine-year-old middle child, Irene. 

Midterms....

   Rosemary caught a stomach bug last night, I guess last night...she started throwing up last night. She warned me, nose to nose, like a freight train blowing its horn. This big thing was gonna happen, like it or not, and I could get safely out of the way or I could be a big part of that exorcist-like stomach flu first vomit. The first toss came at me hard and fast. I made the instinctive quick jump to my right to avoid getting hit in the face. And, like always, while following her to the bathroom, I was trying to understand how all that stuff came out of that little body. Rosie continued to up and chuck all the way to the bathroom. 

      But, here's the kicker, and part of what makes her my little fighter girl. Not once did this six-year-old cry, whine, complain, or even ask me when it would stop. She got up every 45 minutes or so, all night, walked to the bathroom, and puked her guts up.... mostly dry heaving. At one point, she gave me a hand signal to tell me 'don't get up, I've got this.'  My girl manned up tonight and I'm sure I couldn't be prouder. I saw in my youngest child everything I wish I was. She was tough, deliberate, patient and most importantly, Rose accepted and played with stunning grace, the hand life dealt her tonight.