Tonight is the ugly Christmas Sweater party of 2010. I’ve tried to clean the sweaters of their mothball smells, but they still smell a little, so maybe we’ll have to douse them in perfume and cologne and we’ll smell like the 70 year old woman at the office you can smell from 10 feet away, we’ll smell like we’ve lived, we’ll smell like the down slope of life, life under our fingernails.
My friend’s 7 year old daughter has been texting me on their way back from Pittsburgh. It’s her mother’s phone, but she takes it and texts me. It makes me smile because it’s like talking to a 30-year-old woman instead. I told her she should be a mermaid when she grows up so she doesn’t have to work in an office and her reply was “no no no no no no and no” I’m not sure why she wouldn’t want to be a mermaid, but I think she wants to be something that can help people – she mentioned being a doctor once, but has since changed her mind.
I asked her who was driving. “one guess,” she said.
“Your mother and she’s hitting road signs,” I said.
“No. Sarah.” Her 17 almost 18 year old sister who doesn’t have her driver’s license.
“Oh. My. God,” I said. “Well I hope you have your seat belt on!”
“Just kidding. It’s Daddy.”
And then later I told her I loved her and she told me she loved me too and there’s something so great about hearing a child say ‘I love you’ because you know they mean it. They are too young to not know how to mean it.
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