partly

My daughter at nine is a considerably better person than I can ever hope to be..

While saying our goodnights tonight we had our usual "chat time" where we sit in the bed and cover odds and ends of conversation that we didn't have time to talk about during the day.

Tonight we were talking about school and her supplies and what she was going to wear the first day of school. And she said she wanted to take a bunch of Winnie the Pooh stickers so she could make her new red binder "less boring". Then she said: "You know, the boys always teased me last year about liking Pooh..." She didn't quite end the sentence and I knew she had more to say. Now you have to be careful at times like those, because you will be talking about, say, the extremely large cricket that managed to sneak into the house and get killed, then, suddenly, it will be "When are you going to die".

So, I treaded cautiously. "Really?" I said.

"Yes. They wouldn't stop. The kept saying it was a baby thing and that Pooh was retarded and that only a retard would like him."

"Ah..." after that brief -- and extremely articulate -- response, I started to frame all the usual homilies that people say when others demonstrate that remarkable human trait of deliberate cruelty. Tried to come up with a way to ease the hurt and help her realize that the world isn't always a friendly place... Yadda, yadda.

"Yeah," she continued, "they kept it up for so long I actually began to feel sorry for them."

I blinked at her. "Ah..." I said. You will notice I relied, once again, on that clever and complex statement as a response.

She nodded as if I had managed to make a coherent sentence. "I mean," she said, "it must be terrible to think you can't like something as wonderful as Pooh just because you are a boy in third grade."

Then, before I could, once again, "Ah" at her, she was off talking about how much she wanted to have a desk this year instead of sitting at tables.

And I was left thinking: How in the world did this child get to be this smart? She had it all in perspective. She wasn't angry or hurt; nor did she feel the need to justify herself or lash out at those ridiculing her. She was so very centered. So very wise.

May I, one day, be worthy of her.