Last night was business as usual with Miss Kidd – our usual dinner-and-wandering-and-talking routine. But she’s starting to add twists of her own.
So we’re at Steak ‘n Shake, cuz chili goes well with sinus infections for reasons I can’t fully elaborate on, and as we’re wrapping up the meal, Miss Kidd reaches across the table and grabs the check from me.
“I got this.”
Just a very matter-of-fact statement.
Rather than argue with her, I just said I’d cover the tip, which she accepted as fair.
I hung back a bit and watched her as she walked up to the counter, paid the tab (while giving me a sidewise glance and a smile) and bantered with the cashier a bit. I have a hard time looking at her and not seeing the hyperkinetic bouncy-ball she was not so long ago. The fiercely determined little imp who made three words — “No, *I* do!” — sound like a death threat covered in inches-thick layers of cute.
But she’s not those things anymore. At 12, she’s already taller than my mother, my girlfriend and my BFF. (I really do need to stop watering her.) While she isn’t drop-dead model gorgeous, she is definitely a very pretty young lady, and will be even moreso after puberty finishes rebuilding her for adulthood. The intellect is still there, the fierce determination even moreso… time is doing nothing but adding more weapons to her feminine arsenal.
She’s not a little girl anymore… and I have to say I’m pretty fond of the woman she’s growing into.
And maybe just a bit fond of myself for having had a hand in making her into who she is, and who she’ll be.