The Poet

In the spring of 2008, so she would have either been nine or just turned ten years old..... I am guessing 4th grade..... Kate The Poet wrote

The waters blew a salty breeze
And rose above our knobby knees,
then ran away
like a bashful tease.

We ranged across the sparkling sand
with ocean lapping all of the land,
A sunny, funny, happy band.



I found this poem when cleaning out some shelves the other day. Here it is, finally, confirmation that this is my daughter after all.....a beach lover and wordsmith after my own heart. I see alliteration, metaphor.....I would check for iambic pentameter, but I cannot remember exactly what it is. Nevertheless, wow!

FF......that's fast forward as opposed to fairly fantastic.....to August 2012. I am taking Kate to 9th grade registration I ask about her AP classes, to which she responds, "Momma, that's 'After Practice.' We don't get those until 11th grade." Perhaps this child is not mine after all. Really, Kate? Do you honestly think you "practice" in ninth and tenth grades, then get to the 'real stuff' ....the advanced placement....in the eleventh?

I have to believe....or at least fervently hope....sometimes things just slip out of this perfectly beautiful, orthodontically engineered mouth before my always entertaining daughter thinks her thought through. I recall back to Kate's 6th grade announcement that she was in the bachelorette program at her Rucker Middle School, to which I quickly responded that I believed that was a baccalaureate program. I definitely hope it was not a bachelorette program, though some days I might have wondered.

So pretty, so sweet, so funny.....so scattered. She is now one of 387 members of Lancaster High School's Class of 2016. I, like many of the roughly 774 Class of '16 parents have to be wondering, "Are they and more importantly we ready for this?" Why do I have this nagging premonition that there are many more shall we say less than poetic Kate moments to come?