Life goes on, doesn't it? My youngest, turned 18 yesterday. A boisterous, intelligent, stubborn, joyous young woman. With a keen eye and determination that has let her never be stopped when she truly wanted something.
She was our "baby fever" child. That is to say that we had two children already and my ex-wife held her sister's children and we had to have a third for our selves. That was fine with me, I wanted more than two children, although I would have been happy with just the two we had. So, she was brought into the world. Right after she was born, I looked at her mother and said "Now, we're all here."
Through the years, she has been a ray of light. Whether it was taking goofy pictures of the cat and putting filters on them or doing the same with pictures of her sisters. When she was two, I was sitting in the living room with her mother, talking when she stomped out and yelled "What the hell is going on down here!", causing me to fall over laughing and her to start crying.
She doesn't remember a time when her mother and I were not divorced, which is a shame because there were some good times there. When we went to Disney, we got on a plane and she was furious that she had to sit in her car seat. Not because she had to actually sit in her car seat but because she couldn't reach the controls to the little TV on the back of the seat in front of her. She didn't WANT to watch Spongebob, she wanted something else.
She was pretty sick when we got to Disney, she had an ear infection and we had to call a Disney doctor. The doctor came with a nice nurse who talked to her and made her smile. They gave her amoxicillin and then, after the doctor left, we all raced to the Princess Breakfast that we had booked especially for her. She loved it and charmed everyone.
That's one of the defining things about her: She charms everyone she meets. I remember when she was in second grade, on the first day we went to the playground and all the kids were supposed to line up by class. There was no one in the line she was supposed to be in. One of the kids yelled "IT'S GRACIE!" and suddenly, she was surrounded by admirers, like a buttercup in the middle of a sea of grass.
Also in second grade, her teacher contacted me and told me that she wouldn't stop talking. So, I talked to her.
"The teacher says you don't stop talking when she's teaching. Why is that?"
"Well, I know everything she's teaching."
"Yeah but, the other kids don't."
"Oh."
The teacher never had another problem with her talking.
When she was in 6th grade, it came time for her to pick an instrument to play and she was determined to play the tuba. The teacher looked at all four feet of her and said "You're not big enough. You can play baritone, though." A baritone is a small tuba. She reluctantly agreed. When she got to 10th grade, though, she got her tuba. All five feet of her. She was the section leader, too. It was funny watching her boss those much taller boys around. They were afraid of her.
So, she goes off to college in September, to start her life. She's going to study television editing, something she has always excelled at. She's going to do marvelously, I'm sure. After all, nothing she has ever truly wanted has ever been out of her grasp.
