Guimauve

At three Zoey has already surpassed me in coolness. She has better clothes than I do, her shoes are glittierererer, she is a way better dancer what with the way she hops and twirls as if no one is looking, and now she has better hair.
The ladies at her daycare like to play with her hair, and sometimes when I pick her up she looks like this and I feel like maybe we should make some grand elaborate plans on account of her hair looking so pretty--go to a party or a club, get a drink somewhere for Happy Hour. Instead we stop at the grocery store to buy some milk and I find myself looking random strangers in the eye in the hopes that they will say how adorable she is, my daughter. As I said, I am not very cool and have been known to will people to do things. Say my daughter is pretty, she is perfect, check out that hair, c'mon, you know you want to, oh wait, excuse me, can you please hand me one of those things of half and half?...

But that is not enough, never enough, and so I take Zoey out to the garden with my camera and promise her marshmallows if she'll let me take just one picture of her not making that face, the one where she scrunches up her nose and sticks out her tongue, her hands clawing at the air in front of her. Just one more! C'mon Zo! I hear myself pleading with her and I know I should stop, that this is not good, it is not cool, me bribing my daughter with fluff so I can admire her celluloid beauty, fluff for fluff. Tit for tat. One day she might hate me for this, might pierce her eyebrows, her lip, insert one of those quarter-sized tribal discs into her ear to stretch it wide gaping open like a sore. Meanwhile, she will not listen to me still offering marshmallows, proffering sweets if she'd smile just so.

But that is a maybe, the eyebrow piercing, the blase attitude toward fluff in the future; now all I have is this. This sweet sweet girl, the coolest in the world, and the ladies at the daycare that I have been silently and secretly willing to have ask me if they can play with my hair, too.