The Shape of a Girl

Bjork once described herself by saying:  “I am a fountain of blood in the shape of a girl.”  Although I like how her thinking strips away all pretense while still acknowledging the overlay of gender, I wish her words had gone on to include the importance of whimsy: “I’m a fountain of blood in the shape of a girl draped in the skin of a swan.”

At our house, we have a fountain of blood in the shape of a Girl, too.  She doesn’t own a swan dress–nor would she agree to wear a dress of any kind at this stage of her development–but she has enough playful whimsy buffeting about inside her hoodie-clad being that I hold out hope for, at the very least, a faux zebra-skin strapless number paired with a tortoise-shell cape somewhere in her future.

The blood pumping through our Girl is turning 11 today (hey: divisible by 11).  This past week, whenever I’ve been out running, or whenever I’ve been vacuuming in preparation for my mother and brand-new-step-pappy’s visit, I’ve mulled over what I might like to write in commemoration of my firstborn’s birthday.

What I’ve realized is that I have no angle on this one.  After a silly opening  salvo involving an Icelandic singer, I’ve got nothing.  Here’s the thing:  our Girl is simple, and not in the fashion of a Jethro.  She is the beautiful, pure, easy, uncomplicated kind of simple, and trying to fashion anything fancy about her would feel false and overwrought.   She’s simply, marvelously, genuinely simple.

When I gave birth to a girl, I never saw that coming.  Even before the placenta was expelled, I worried about our future clashes, about her hyper-sensitivity, about the feelings her peers would crush into little red pepper flakes, about the tears, about the emotional aches.

Based on my own life experience, I knew all too well what was coming.

To my endless delight, she is stunningly not like me.  She is simple.  She is confident.  She is brave.  She is singularly kind.  She is thoughtful.  She is nurturing.  The worst thing I can say about her is that she often cries when doing math.

When family and friends have asked, these past months, what they can send to her that would be a welcome part of a care package, her answer generally has been, “I don’t need anything.  I’m fine.”  Trying to ferret out if there really is something she’d like, I make suggestions and ask in a different way, yet the answer is always, “Nope.  I’m good.”  Even more, as she’s grown taller and taller, and her pants have all become several inches too short, I’ve told her we can make a real effort to find her some longer ones that fit.  However, knowing that we plan to leave behind as many clothes as possible when we return home, so as to save on weight in our luggage, she merely looks down, takes a gander at her peeping socks, and says, “I don’t need any new pants.  I’m good.  These are fine.”

Recalling the wellspring of need inside myself as a kid, I am bewildered by her unflappable goodness, her fineness.  Her steady responses are doing an excellent job of teaching me to shut up and back off, though.  She is good.  She is fine. 

Here in Turkey, she has no social life.  Although she adores her crowd of friends back home, she accepts that having no friends is part of the deal for her in here.  Moreover, in Turkey, she has no out-of-the-house activities.  Sometimes she takes out her viola and saws on it for me; we can’t find her a teacher here.  Other times, she kicks a soccer ball around our courtyard.  She likes helping me bake.  She reads.  She horses around with Paco.  As the slideshow below reveals, this pre-adolescent is getting through her days in a foreign country in admirable fashion.

Indeed, it’s fine.  She loves Turkey, says she’ll miss it when we leave.  Every trip we’ve taken this year has struck her as the best of adventures, and while we were in Italy, she was already planning a future trip to Norway; when we were in Antakya, she was wondering when we could go to Marden.  When we sat in the basement of our hotel in Gaziantep, eating the free meal that comes with the price of the room, she eyed the set menu of plain yogurt and lentil soup and avowed, “I can eat these things.  I want to be someone who can eat anything.”

I am grateful for this time away from home, then, for the way it’s defined her.  She doesn’t need stuff; she likes experiences.  Her face shines upon the unknown.  Maya Angelou, who said, “I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life’s a bitch. You’ve got to go out and kick ass,” would need to clap hands on her buttocks to shield them from Girl’s pummeling, would need to rev up the presses to make a million copies of a Grabbing the World by the Lapels poster featuring this kid.

Speaking of being a poster girl, and to undercut every assertion I’ve just made about our fifth grader, there is something Girl wants for her birthday, and it’s not an experience.  With the lack of friends around her this year, she has forged a strong interest in a ‘tween magazine called Discovery Girls: she knows the names of all the girls in recent issues; she tracks which states were visited in which year and if they’ll be coming to Minnesota in 2012; she watches behind-the-scenes videos online; she dreams of one day being chosen as a Discovery Girl herself.  She’s a little obsessed, which is a relief.  It means she’s human.

As a result of this passion for Discovery Girls, she has a strong desire to own every back issue so that her knowledge base can be complete.  She would go nuts to have even one more issue in her hands.

She knows Grandma is bringing the two most recent issues in her suitcase, and that anticipation has caused several days of excited monologuing already.

However, this lovely Girl has no conception of is that there’s something else in store for her birthday.  She has no idea that we won a lot of 22 back issues of Discovery Girls off Ebay, that our friends Kirsten and Virginia carried them to London in their suitcases, that I then transferred them to my bags and carried them through Istanbul and Kayseri and to Ortahisar,

that they are hiding right now in our bathroom storage closet.

When she opens her gift, she will be astonished, gobsmacked, excited, overwhelmed, delighted, floored, ecstatic,

maybe a bit more than

simply fine.

[flickrslideshow acct_name=”70029074@N00″ id=”72157626366151658″]

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12 responses to “The Shape of a Girl”

  1. Jazz Avatar

    🙂 That’s all.

  2. lime Avatar

    ok, fountain of blood kind of strikes me as a little like something out of a horror film. that girl of yours is a fountain of pure mountain spring water. cool, refreshing, sparkling, and beautiful in her simplicity. well done, young lady. well done, mama and papa.

  3. Monica Avatar

    Happy B day to a gorgeous and beautiful 11 year old girl!!! Oh the thrill and sweet anticipation of knowing you will give someone something they really long for and will be happy to get, is awesome!!

    Hope the day was great!!

  4. Deborah Avatar

    You have a girl not unlike the girl I have – uncomplicated, straightforward – a WYSIWYG child. Allegra is lovely and loveable, and while her personality is entirely her own, her approach to the world and responses to it have been shaped by her parents. So, while it might seem a little self-serving to take credit to the way children turn out, I think you should just do that. She’s not like you partly because you’ve made it possible for her to be herself.

    I still love the picture of Allegra and her brother drawing on the roof. It seems to encapsulate the whole Turkish experience.

    And lastly, you sure do know how to spring surprises. Not just on Allegra, but on the lucky reader who, getting to the last paragraph, gasps and chokes up at the wonderfulness of getting 22 back issues of Discovery Girls. Way to go, Jocelyn. May you bask in the pleasure of her pleasure for many moons.

  5. oreneta Avatar

    She will be more than simply happy indeed! One very very happy girl! Happy Birthday!

  6. Jenn @ Juggling Life Avatar

    This post is both a beautiful tribute and paints a vivid picture of your girl. She sounds like quite a “Discovery Girl” herself.

  7. kmkat Avatar

    I know not of Discovery Girls, but I do know of simplicity… and Allegra seems to be a treasure of it !

  8. secret agent woman Avatar

    I think for girls , that age (10-11 or so) is such an exciting time. Before the agonies of pubescence set in, before they start doubting their own strength – it seems like such an authentic time.

  9. Cathy B Avatar
    Cathy B

    Wow, not only is your daughter just-plain-beautiful, but the way you describe her birthday present makes me want exactly that! In fact I went to the magazine’s website, and I wish it had been around when I was a tween!
    The birthdays from 9 to 12 are still happy memories for me many years later. I can only imagine that the same will be true for your daughter, when such a long-desired gift is waiting.

  10. geewits Avatar

    She’s not only a lucky girl, you are a lucky mom. May the luck stay with you both for all of time. I can’t wait to read about her in just ten years. She will be an outstanding young woman.

  11. green girl in wisconsin Avatar

    Many happy returns! She sounds like a magnificent person–Elizabeth Bennett, Jo March and Anne Shirley rolled into a bundle of perfection!
    Now, let’s talk turkey (pun intended)–we need to arrange a match with her and my oldest who NEEDS a woman like her one day.

  12. Choochoo Avatar

    a fountain of blood in the shape of a girl… maybe the swan put up a fight.

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