My Kid

I was trying to explain to a classmate of mine recently that Dutch and I have some wildly divergent tastes. Because I'm exhausted (and tend toward verbal diarrhea anyway), I ended up telling her that before Dutch was born, I would never, given a lineup of 5-year-olds, have identified Dutch as my kid. She's not what I thought I'd get. I was thinking, if I thought about it at all, that my daughter would be a more straightforward kid, a kid who would wear whimsically mismatched tomboy clothes and tackle the world with determination. A plucky kid. There's a kid in Dutch's class who's kind of the kid I expected and wished for. She has a funny deep voice and adorable short hair, and she barges right up to life and engages with it. I like her, but I'd rather have Dutch.

Dutch is just herself. Most of Dutch's obvious personality traits are very clearly inherited from various family members, but you could never have guessed which ones would turn up and how. Nothing about our girl is straightforward, but there are all sorts of strange little delights tucked away in all the twists and turns. Also, some of the things I loved about my imaginary child are pretty easy to align with my real child. For example, it turns out that baseball gloves can now be purchased in pink.*

Anyway, Dutch declared that she is going to be rich and famous, probably for writing a book, possibly for writing a play,** so we're going to live off her riches when she grows up. (Screw the imaginary kid - THIS kid's going to be RICH!) If she doesn't end up doing some sort of acting/dancing/whatever onstage at some point in her life, I will be surprised. She had to memorize a poem*** for her acting class, and she blithely performed it at "Music Time" for two classfuls of preK and K kids at her daycare. That takes some pluck.


*Title IX, I'm looking at you.
**She organized a focus group at her daycare for her classmates to help her flesh out characters and plot for the book she's currently writing. It seems that talking animals will be involved, and dumbwaiters.
*** Cook and I have perforce memorized it too, since she can't read. I am prone to talking or singing out loud to myself anyway, which makes for some embarrassing moments on transit, and now I find myself muttering "and guarding vast caches of GOLD!" in the hallway at school.