One Foot on a Banana Peel

I always do, but there are just some times you have to tell everyone, ya know?  Some times she can exasperate me….just stomp all over my last nerve, if you know what I mean.  She can be, and often is, the stereotypical self-absorbed teenage girl worried about nothing more than how good she looks in order to better attract hot guys.

But then there are times like now.  She has been sitting here glued to the television all evening watching everything she can find about the terrible tragedy at Virginia Tech.  It’s at times like these that a very humbling compassion appears in her.  She tries so hard to understand not only what the survivors feel or the relatives and friends of the victims, but also what drove the shooter to do what he did.  When she saw his picture, her first words were said in a soft, sad voice, "He looks like someone that people would pick on."  My baby hurts even for him.

She has always been this way.  Even as a toddler, she would be the one to "nurse" me when I was sick.  You know how it is, we take care of everyone, but when we get sick everyone disappears.  Not Meg.  At 2 and 3 she would do what she could and bring me tissues, sit and stroke my head or pat my arm.  When my mother-in-law died Meg, who was just 6, spent the service dispensing tissues to her aunts and cousins and after she walked by the casket for the last time she turned without prompting and gave her grandfather a hug.

It’s the times like that when my heart swells with love and pride.  I know then that we’ll live through these rocky teenage years and that she will be a lovely young woman.