My Daughter is a Dragon

People tell me all the time (in exactly the manner I knew they would about six years ago) that River is a "girly girl."  They see her love of all things glittery, her passion for dress-up, her dramatic gestures as she poses as a royal princess and they pretty much gloat over her over-the-top girlness.  (For my part, I'm always tempted to say, "You know that in order for her to exist, I was pregnant, right?  Which totes makes me a girl."  But that seems not very lady-like.)

These people are always right--my girl is a girly girl.  But she's also a ninja (she takes after me.)  And a knight.  And a dragon.  

Being a ninja means that she follows you around the house silently, ducking behind furniture and dropping to the ground when you turn around so that she can surprise you when she leaps out yelling "HIIIIII YAHHHH" while giggling madly.  

Being a knight means that she gets one of Jeffrey's Nerf swords and runs out with him to the trampoline (sometimes in a tutu) and beats the everloving crap out of him with it.

Being a dragon means that she winds up sitting in the doctor's office with me for three hours with a gash on her forehead that should have gotten stitches the night before.

A couple of weeks ago, we found How to Train Your Dragon on sale and had a movie night with it.  I love this movie for several reasons:  

• The "trust in yourself," "trust in your kids," "don't judge others" message of the Pixar (my standard of computer generated animation) movies is not quite as ham-handed in this Dreamworks movie.
• There is much less crying in this movie as there are in the Pixar movies.  (And by crying, I mean the crying that I do.)
• This movie connects the Vikings with Scottish Celts which, you know, AWESOME.  (I am an Indo-European nerd.)
• DRAGONS.  Come ON.  

Since then, we have discovered a weird, abbreviated cartoon series on Netflix, the "Holiday Special" HTTYD, and a new cartoon series on The Cartoon Netweork, all of which has caused my girly to be batcrap crazy for the movie, the show, and--most especially--Toothless the dragon.

BTW, this is Toothless and his boy, Hiccup, riding around being all best friends til the end:

I don't know why River has latched on to Toothless as the thing she wants to be, nor why she isn't excited by Astrid, the girl in the movie who rides a really cool blue dragon with a spiky tail.  I probably wouldn't have wanted to be Astrid, either, because she doesn't get to ride Toothless, and let's be honest, black dragons are cooler than blue dragons any day.  I'm not saying that I would have killed Hiccup off in my imaginary world, I'm just saying that, perhaps, he would have fallen ill and I'd be the only one who could ride Toothless.  I'm also not saying that I wish I had a handy hay bale to pretend to ride dragons on right now.  

Really.

Anywho, the night River bashed her head open, I had started her in the shower and then gotten a call from Jeffrey's math teacher.  The "new math" is giving him some problems, mainly because it involves long division and also because it is inscrutable and has boxes and other stuff designed to make people go crazy.  I took the call because I wanted to find out how Jeffrey was doing and what was going on with him and what I could do to help.  Also, River up until that night had been perfectly capable of taking showers by herself for a while and I figured that the phone call would be short.

Well, the phone call wasn't short at all, and I wound up going outside so Jeffrey couldn't hear me talk about him and because Will and J were working on math homework at the time and J was eating his own face, which is a little distracting.  I assumed that Will would keep half an ear/eye/whatever on River, but I underestimated the power of new math, because when I finally got inside and went to the bathroom, River was standing on the rug crying with blood on her face.

Awesome.

I checked out her head, which wasn't as bloody as I'd always heard headwounds were, but which was still fairly gnarly.  It needed a stitch or two; she had popped open the first layer of skin and, you know...barf.  I dried her off and said, "Okey dokey.  Time to get dressed."

And then she lost her mind.  River's not exactly calm when it comes to things like getting splinters out, having bandaids removed, getting her hair combed...the girl's dramatic to the extreme and a total wuss about pain.  I  don't mean that as an insult.  It took my mother, two nurses, and a doctor to hold me down so I could get a shot when I was River's age.  I'm just saying, "I'm sorry, Mama.  Bless your heart.  Here, have a rum and coke on me."  Anyway, River figured out that getting dressed meant she was getting stitches and it was fairly ugly from then on.

Will wandered in and said, "What are you doing?"

I said, "Uh.  Taking River to the hospital to get stitches."  (It should be noted, for clarity's sake, that both of us were awash in guilt and probably some blame at this point in time.  I was trying to be all cool about it, but what I wanted to say was, "SERIOUSLY?")

He said, "Do you think that's for the best?"

I blinked.  "Erm.  Yes.  Do you not?"

"Well, it's just...emergency rooms are for emergencies and this isn't an emergency."

Now, I don't know about y'all, but I'm not down with sewing up my kid's head with embroidery floss or fishing line, and since this was a medical situation with which I wasn't down, it qualified as an emergency for me.

At this point in time, I made what was the second parenting blunder of the evening, which would have lasting effect on the next couple of days.  I was tired.  I was stressed about Jeffrey.  River was writhing on the ground, sobbing and clutching at her head.

I looked up at Will and said, "Okay.  Go get some butterfly bandaids.  I'll take her to the doctor in the morning."

Oh, HEATHER.  You eejit.  Please say it with me.  It will make you feel better.  Because I know as well as you know that one shouldn't wait to get stitches and that this was going to cause problems.  This is one of those times when doing the easy thing is the wrong thing.  Seriously, avoid the easy things.  They are bitchy little suckers and they will bite your butt in the end.

The night passed and Will and Jeffrey headed off to work and school.  River stayed home with me and I called the doctor's office, during which call I was informed that the doctor couldn't see me til 1:45.  Do fuh?

"I can't let her walk around all day long with a gaping head wound," I said, mentally daring the receptionist to point out that it was my fault her head was gaping.  She didn't.  Dang it.

The next few hours are a blur now.  I know that Will called the doctor's office after I talked to him and they told him they would fit me in.  "Fit me in" is receptionist-speak for "this dang fool won't hush until we tell him we'll see his child."  "Fit me in" also means that I sat in the office for three hours...long enough to watch The Frog Princess one and a half times.  Long enough for the NP who saw River to poke at her head and cover it with some steri strips and say, "She probably could have used a stitch or two."

Yes.  Thank you.

River is back to normal now, only a faint line across her forehead to remind us of that day.  At first, I dithered about it, like "Her face!  Her beautiful FAAAACCCEEEE."  It was all very Marlena Dietrich.  (Actually, I'm not sure it WAS all Marlena Dietrich. Would Marlena wig out about a scar?)  But then I realized that the scar was a gift.

I don't know what the Squish is going to turn out to be:  a girly girl, a tomboy, or a nerd queen.  Will she be a teacher?  A lawyer?  A baby photographer?  (Please note the baby in the basket.  That ROCKS!!)

I do know that hatever she winds up becoming, she will have doubts.  Fears will rise up.  She will lose touch with who she is and where she wants to be and how it is she will get there.  She will feel weak or like a bad friend or she will stumble on her spiritual path.

When those times come, when she is staring blearily at tear-stained face in the bathroom mirror, having just collapsed in a heap and wallowed on the bathroom mat, I hope she notices the tiny scar on her forehead and says, "Fewmets to all that.  I'm a DRAGON, y'all."

                                    

"And I am beautiful."