The Dwelling Daughter

Most days I wonder if my daughter is really 6, soon to be 7 years old.

This week boy-child is away at a camp.  Now what I imagined the typical response to a younger sibling being free of their older and at times very obnoxious brother would be to celebrate, to look forward to the prospect of being an only child temporarily and be able to do girlie things without boys getting in the way.  The actual response?  Tears, huge body-wracking sobs of hysteria.  I didn’t think it was possible for a little girl to be so sad, or so I thought.

Fast forward to today and we were in the car driving home from a birthday party after having done a spot of shopping on the way home.  We drove by the Melbourne Cemetery and girl-child asked where I was going to be buried.  I responded her by reminding her that both man-child and I hoped to be cremated at which she said “Oh that’s right, I remember you said that.”  I was thinking that that was the end of the conversation as she went quiet for a few seconds, but she then commented that Granddad was cremated and he was in a cemetery, why wouldn’t we be in a cemetery too?  I had to explain that cremation was actually the body being burned and then my ashes could be sprinkled in a place that was special to us.  She was concerned that if my body was burned my spirit would be destroyed and she sat in the back seat of the car sobbing quietly, tears streaming down her face.  Naturally this coincided with being stuck in traffic with no possibility to stop to talk properly.  Instead I was forced to keep talking about death and ways to celebrate the life of a person who has died, how you can keep a person’s spirit alive by keeping them in your heart and your thoughts.  She seemed content with that concept and added, “But we shouldn’t have to worry about that for a long time yet, should we?”

As well as being a dwelling daughter with thoughts that, to me at least, seem in appropriately mature for one so young, she also has interests not so typical of an almost 7 year old.  She wanted to make a gift for the girl who’s birthday party she was attending today, her oldest friend in the world.  She wanted to make something special so she dragged out our her favourite book of inspiration “Meet me at Mike’s“.  She wanted to make something that she would love for herself, whilst the Softies in the book are beautiful, she declared that a 7 year old wouldn’t really need any new teddies.  Instead she should have something that she can use all the time.  The resulting birthday gift choice was a book cover and a little bag that can hold her pens and treasures.  Since we (well me really) were in a hurry, I did the sewing and she did some of the cutting and most of the embroidery.  The finished result was pretty darn cute!

The Book Cover Birthday Present

A bag for treasures

Perhaps I should make one for girl-child for her birthday in 3 weeks, I just don’t know who I can get to do the embroidery!