Heels

Jessie is short.  It’s been an established fact of her existence for a couple of years now – with her older sisters towering over her.  Glennys was the same way – we’d have these four girls bouncing around the house, and three of them were super tall, and one was adorably… not tall.

She didn’t like being short, and there were many, many conversations about WHY was she sort, and would she ever grow.  I’m a big fan of judging kids like I judge puppies, and Jessie’s paws (her hands and feet) are tiny.  She’s four shoe sizes bigger than her baby sister.  Her little brother has bigger feet than she does.

I liked her being short.  I mean, she’s my daughter, so I like just about everything about her, but the fact that she was on the shorter side never really concerned me.  My sister is short, my cousin Becky is short.  My grandmother was short.  I’m on the taller side, and Marc is obviously tall – but there are recessive genes and so what if she’s short?  I always kind of wanted to be shorter.

Then she grew.  All of a sudden, and all at once, she’s suddenly tall.  She’s a few inches shorter than I am now.  She’s within striking distance of Glennys, and it seems as though every day, she’s just a tiny bit taller.  Just a little bit, but it keeps happening.

I can’t get used to it.

Yesterday, we went out, and she was in heels.  Which is not an every day occurrence, but she couldn’t find any shoes (which happens far more often than it should) and grabbed a pair of heels she had snagged from my sister’s goodwill box.  She just started wearing her hair in a side part, and with the heels, and the sunglasses and hair… it was surreal.  Suddenly, she wasn’t just a little girl anymore.  She was almost as tall as I was, and so staggeringly gorgeous, with her ridiculously long legs, and perfect little face.  She was tanned and wearing a bright yellow top and blue denim shorts… it was very different from walking around with my little baby girl.  Because she was eye level, all of a sudden.

The milestones are different when they get older.   There’s no place in a baby book for the first time you go to a restaurant with your daughter and the teenage waiter is surreptitiously checking her out.    I don’t know that it’s a milestone, that’s not the right word.   But it was definitely something – and one thing I know for certain – I’ll be hiding those heels.  I’ve still got a few more years before my baby girl grows up.