Thursday, February 12, 2009

Signing on the dotted line

Claire now has her own library card. While Jon stayed home with the boys, Claire and I walked to the library a few nights ago and filled out the form.

On the signature line, she wrote her first and last name.

Though the "N"s were backwards and there was an unpredictable mix of lower and upper case letters, there it was. Claire Van Duinen.

It was a beautiful moment. She was so proud, so self aware that this was a big step of independence. Desperately trying to live in the moment and not overanalyze or overemotionalize (a word?) the event, I suggested the only thing that came to mind as I looked at my five year old daughter and her bright eyes and big smile and the new little blue card in her hand,

"Let's go to the coffeeshop and celebrate"

Celebrate we did. We ate cinnamon rolls and then went upstairs and checked out 20 books.

1 comment:

Wicker Family said...

Oh that I could have joined with you at that moment!