Yeah. You read that right. While Julia is indeed GROWING UP (as evidenced by the fact that all the jeans she got for her February birthday are, only 4 months later, now capris).  Julia is also, and more disturbingly,  GROWING AWAY.

The signs have been there for a while. It started happening part way through 1st Grade. Suddenly, she didn’t want me walking her to the gate at drop-off. She certainly didn’t want me to HUG and KISS her in front of her friends. That would be met with a look that was something out of the possession by Kandari demons scene in THE EVIL DEAD.

When she would come home from school, instead of the customary HUG and FLURRY OF KISSES that I used to get after her 3 hour stint at kindergarten, she began RUSHING PAST ME without so much as a “hello” and went straight to the play room or TV room or pantry for a snack – and this after 6 WHOLE HOURS of being away from me for first grade!

But I took solace in the fact that at bedtime she was still my baby snuggle bug. Something about being tired and in that twilight just before the Sand Man took her to sleepy land, made her “want her mamma”. As I read to her or she read to me, she would still press her little body (all 52 inches and 52 pounds of it) against mine. Her head against my chest, as she did as a baby when she sought out the sound of my BEATING HEART – her constant companion during those nine/ten months when we shared my body.

Maybe she ignored me in front of her friends, but during story time she would still look up at me with those big eyes straight out of that Van Morrison song, and delight in my accents (Hagrid, Harry, Hermoine, and the Joneses – Skippy John and Junie B. ).

But since the end of 1st Grade, my now official 2nd Grader has changed yet again. The way we interact at home, it’s like two ships passing in the night. Where one ship only drops anchor long enough to ask the other ship for a snack or lunch or where her cowboy hat is – the one that looks like Jesse’s from Toy Story 2.

And at bedtime now, she curls up with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and reads silently to herself! And when she does ask me to read to her, like she did last night, it’s only after I ask her if she wants me to read to her, she says no, I look disappointed and she changes her mind – obviously out of some 7 year-old sense of pity.  And as I read to her she stays on her side of the bed, keeping a distance. And when I move my feet under the covers to meet hers, she pulls hers AWAY!

I have to ASK for the hugs and kisses now. And she gives them…grudgingly. I see the great effort and annoyance in her every movement. And it makes me sad. No one wants to ASK to be loved. It’s like having to ask your husband to keep his distance when you’re PMS. I mean, after all these years, shouldn’t he JUST KNOW?!  

Anyway. Randy the perfekt husband WARNED me about this. Whenever I would complain that she liked to spend too much time snuggling in our bed and watching “How It’s Made” or when I’d MOAN about the fact that I NEVER got any time to myself…Randy would say:

“One day she won’t want to have anything to do with either of us…and then you’ll miss all this.”

I knew he was right. What I didn’t know was that it would start happening so SOON!

So now I must take solace in the fact that when she gets sick, and she WILL get sick as all kids do, she’ll NEED me. See, I’m the only one in the house willing to clean up puke. Also, I KNOW where that Jesse hat is.