Caveat Lector

Today is about loss.
If that is a bummer for you, stop now and go do something productive. Preferably with chocolate.

...I can't write this yet.

Some hours later...

I opted to read about gain and ignore the losses I have tallied up on my score-card of life.
Not to forget the lesson that loss teaches, I just don't want to drag them behind me anymore.
So I don't, almost don't.

Currently, I hear my youngest call from the bathtub. No doubt summoning me to fetch the towel that she chooses to forget. Of all my children she is the most imp-like. My friend calls her a buzz saw. An accurate description, but chipper/shredder might be more accurate.

Her attitude says, "I have needs and you will meet them." And so of course, I do.
This attitude is for me alone. Our unique mother-daughter bond.

She has her reasons that are not a mystery to my family. To the world she is a puzzle of painfully shy, emotionally cripplingly, downright rudeness. It is a sensory overload that hopefully time will cure, or maybe not.

When people realize this they try and draw her out, which only serves to push her more tightly in.

She can't bear to be touched. Now that she is older she knows that this is rude and will stand stock still to almost tolerate a hug from an acquaintance, but it requires monumental effort.
I will pay for this because sometimes I am not her buffer.
I am the mother, I should fend and interpret for her---her eyes tell me, and frequently I do. But she has to make her own way eventually and baby steps are good.

At our house good is subjective. Many things that are mundane, odd, or downright unusual are good, real good.

Last year we had pneumonia together, she and I. We went to the emergency room. 
The intake Doc came into--intake. He looked at my chart and looked at her chart and then at us.

"You are the..."(looks at charts again--and again) "you are the mother?"

"That's correct."

Looks at charts, knits brow.
"You are 57 and your daughter is...6?"

"Correct, again."

I have, as the whim strikes me, spun the yarn of fertility drugs, late in life pregnancy, and breast feeding without having to lift my child up off of my lap, but I was too sick for my old bag-of-tricks and he chose not to pursue his.
Sadly, another laugh lost.

I love her for all of her twisting of my tail because she mostly makes me laugh at that giant attitude.
Her bad attitude is my great guffaw.