Little Bird Of Fiercest Flight

I bend to Phoenix’s ear at the fabric cutting counter and say, sotto voce: “Your hair looks greasy.”

“Who cares,” she airily replies, leaning forward on her elbows. “Certainly not me.”

My daughter is incredible. She’s like that friend you loved dearly, that girl you wanted to be. She’s smart and kind and beautiful and has a distinctive style of her own. Her toes are dirty at the end of the day but she is circumspect and loving. She makes her brother chocolate milk and she fetches me coffee if she sees my cup is empty.

She draws ferocious monsters, pages and pages and notebooks full of them, not a one alike, but then she gives me a backrub while we’re driving. She stays up late with me and looks into domestic foxes so we can have one who sleeps on her bed. She pulls her brother and the neighborhood boy D. in a giant wagon but when they horse around too much for her taste she says, “Sit. Down.” in this sharp voice mama-familiar that causes Ralph and I to look at one another, side-eye.

She takes the last bit of cash on her today and buys me fancy cookies.

Home and she takes her pumpkin up on the table and gets modelling clay and makes an “evilly-smiling” face, with a huge wound exposing his brain and a knife sticking out the other side. She makes this up in about five minutes. I’ll post a picture tomorrow. It’s awesome.

She puts on a horrible documentary about vicious parasites that wreak havoc on human beings. She says, “I’ll bet the next stage in the parasite’s life cycle is a snail.” To my minor astonishment this is true. I say, “How did you know that?” And she says, flatly, almost – almost – rudely, “Research.”

Clipped tone.

Like, how the fuck you think I know that.

These are all just like, a few things I remember over the last few days.

She heals up every way I wasn’t raised right.