Today is little T’s birthday and she’s four years old. Her mum, Dan, is one of my best friends and a true kindred spirit. They live in the US now but we talk all the time – a blessing of the modern age of Skype and cheap phone cards (why does it cost less to call international than it does to call interstate?).
Dan and I have nicknamed T the Theme Park Girl, because she lives life with unbridled enthusiasm, finding enormous delight in the minutiae that most people take for granted. A walk home from kindy can take a loooong time, because it can involve stopping at every flower for a sniff, or turning over every pebble to see what the underside looks like, or practising dance steps to the rhythm of the boom-boom car that’s driving past. Her sheer joy at new things is a treasure in itself and when she had her first ballet lesson – she was so happy that Dan thought she might actually float away.
A year ago, when they first moved to the States, Dan was bemoaning the lack of decent sandwich bread, so I taught her how to bake her own (over Skype, no less). She in turn taught small girl, who produced a baby roll all by herself. You can almost sense how proud she was in the photo.
Happy Birthday Princess!
