Shorn

The young woman that played hide-and-seek with my little girl emerged victorious. The hair that's been rarely trimmed and has grown for nine and a half years was cut last Tuesday. The ripe wheat heaped high on the floor and I thought of the fuzzy headed baby with laughing brown eyes and jack-o-lantern grin.

My sister Lisa was mortified when our mother cried over Lisa's first major haircut; so I sat dry-eyed, the tears unformed.

As we walked out Avonlea commented, "I didn't know hair weighed anything. I didn't realize it was so heavy until it was gone." Swish. Swish.

Shorn and sophisticated she's spent the last two days furiously writing poetry. She reads the poems to me dramatically, her hair swishes in all the right places and her brown eyes laugh. The conclusion brings a jack-o-lantern grin (she's getting adult teeth). The young lady is relentlessly emerging but the little girl still peeks out now and then. This slender elf, this bursting rose bud, this dancing, doodling, reading, writing, knitting wonder is my daughter. I'm so grateful for Avonlea.