Wild Horses

Way back when, I knew I would be a star one day. A singer to be more exact. The bar that I DJ'd Karaoke at encouraged my dream, paying for me to go to a studio, write and record a single. They produced it and sold copies at the front door. I was kind of a big deal back then.

But life, reality, bills - they all have a way of grabbing you and putting you in your place. I traded all of those big dreams of stardom, for this life, a life that I would never, ever trade - but a life I never thought I would have.

Like rocks in a stream, the hustle and bustle, the tiny ripples and grains of sand, smooth us down, polishing and shining us into these perfect pebbles - erasing all of the jagged edges and differences until we conform into what society tells us is right, appropriate - normal.

I wonder sometimes if my daily mantra of "Do it this way", "Put some damn clothes on", "Quit dancing and jumping off of my couch" is in someway the precursor to Z's smoothing down. That I am somehow reigning in this wild little filly and expecting her to conform to my ideas of normalcy. If somehow I am teaching her that it is not good to be quirky, eccentric, goofy, or the naked little oddball.

I have always said that I don't care if she goes to college, I don't care what she becomes when she grows up -  as long as she is happy. But what if happiness to her is being a stripper or a nudist - and I am teaching her that that is bad and wrong? What if happiness to her is jumping out of perfectly good airplanes (name that movie) or off of bridges? Here I am demanding that she stop her daredevilish pursuits in the interest of my own sanity - when really she is merely showcasing the things that make her happiest in life.

I love her uniqueness, I love the way that she sees the world and the way that she interprets the world back to me - her descriptions are so colorful so vivid and I often have to stop and think about what she is talking about to understand her point of view. It's awesome and a little scary at times when I get those little glimpses into her mind.

Those things, that jaggedness is part of what makes Z, Z and what scares me is that in a few years, she won't have that same light, that same unique window on the world, that someone - a teacher, a friend, me - will have smoothed out that part of her.

How can I protect those things I love without honing back the dangerous aspects of what she is doing (leaping off of the couch, onto the table and back again, climbing anything that she can get a grip off - especially while naked)?

I am all for strange and weird - as long as it doesn't interrupt my sense of normal.