in between

I'm not so sure I want to be 14, she said as I pulled the car out of the parking lot of the gym on the eve of her 14th birthday.  

Yeah, I know, I answered, 13 is the big of little and 15 is the little of big but 14....
...Is in between, she finished.

You my daughter, are the age your sister was when I left her father & her future shifted.

You are a year younger than I was when I met him, the man I would marry at 18 and have 2 kids with.  You are only 3 years shy of the age when I became a mother for the first time.

This is the edge of childhood.  The point in the journey where one is high enough to see the skies of their future stretching across the whole horizon.

Dawdle, walk, sprint, it's up to you. 

You have had an Indian Summer Childhood.  Still you walk among the flowers and lay in the grass when many of your peers have moved on.  It won't last forever.  Something will call you away from here.  You will wander back and forth until one day you will be starting at an image of yourself that no longer remembers how to return.

I tease you that you are the Keeper, the one child who will stay with us and take care for us when we are old but I suspect you are the child who will go the furthest away. 

You ask your dad if he will help you build your future house.  You ask me if you can have my car.  You still like to sleep in our bed.

When you were six years old we had to all agree to stop call you The Baby.  You were named before you were born, before we knew if your were a girl or a boy. You were 3 before we realized how blind you were. At six and a half you started gymnastics.   

Today you rest in the clearing of in between.  But in between what? One side you have already filled in with bright colors and bold lines. What the other side will be, is all up to you.

Happy Birthday, Beach!