It's Mine & It's Yours

 

 This is Jada. 

She is my sister's daughter's daughter.

She is my Grandniece.

Tomorrow we celebrate her 8th birthday.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven thus far.

Can you imagine your age in the single digits? 

I don't at all mean that existentially. I try to imagine it now, try to count my age on my two hands.

She took this photo of me on Christmas Day:

And I took this photo of her: 

Like any seven-almost-eight-year-old, she's picky. I'm her favorite one time, I'm ignored the next.

But there's no front about the love or lack of; she doesn't apologize for giving me more or less of her company, and I like that.

And it's useless to ask her why, to try and figure it out for yourself.

Turns out, she had the flu on Christmas. So I got the flu too.

She gave more magical things too, more metaphysical and less biotic.

This is the moment I should write KIDS! and make sure the exclamation point is attached, punch you lightly in the shoulder while I write it. Then we laugh together and share stories about how tiny people make us feel young and wish we were that age again and perhaps how impressed with are with their maturity/imagination or how we deal with our resentment toward their potential. 

I don't feel any of those ways. I don't know, I'm missing the Romanticize-Kids gene.

Like adults, sometimes you tumble for one or two of them. 

Is it silly to write that I respect Jada? In a non-wistful way.

We were born almost three decades apart, around the same time of day.

Tomorrow, we celebrate together.