Currently

She and I are in Trader Joe’s on a Saturday. “Can you pick out the yogurt?” I ask. “Get some apples, too.” I grab a couple bags of arugula, tomatoes, and some cucumbers. She comes back with yogurt and apples, and places them in the cart so that they don’t smoosh the groceries that are already there. “How about blueberries?” she asks, lifting a carton. They’re too expensive. They always are, but I say sure because they were her favorite fruit when she was two. We bought her a pound of them for her birthday. “Boo bing bings,” she called them, and we laughed and told her to slow down, to swallow; that she didn’t have to eat them all at once.

“I like your hair,” a guy says to her.

“Thank you!” she tells him. “I like yours, too!”

The guy has purple hair. I look at her and she says, “What? It’s cool.”

“He looks washed out,” I tell her.

“What does that even mean?” she asks me.

I don’t answer. I’m thinking of the guys I knew who shaved their initials into their hair, or zig-zagged, or even swirled their parts. Now that was cool.

You know what’s not cool? Trying to take a picture of your middle school daughter who is playing a shark in the school play, James and the Giant Peach. No, Dad. No pictures. Pictures taken by friends? Sure. Pictures taken by friends with friends? I’m here for it. Pictures taken by my friends’ parents? OK. Not you, Dad. Or you, Mom. #sorrynotsorry

So we steal them, Jesse and I. We take these moments of our growing girl who for the life of me has no more traces of baby I can find. And it’s not that I feel we are losing her, it’s more that we are continually getting to know her, and snapping a picture, even if it’s unwanted, allows us to hold her close and let her go at the same time.

Sunday morning I am up first, as usual. She comes downstairs a few minutes after me, just as she used to when she was little. “Mama?” She used to say when I told her that 5:30 in the morning was too early for her to be up. “If I see a light on, I’m comin’ out.” This morning, she sits on my lap, which really means she sits on me for I have no lap for her to sit on anymore. We make room for each other, though, and she sighs. “Can we stay like this forever?” she asks.

No, that won’t work, Miss Hadley. You are spreading your wings and taking flight, but I’m content to hold on and let you go at the same time.