Girl Time

In elementary school circles - or at least in ours - the annual Father/Daughter dance has taken on prom-like proportions. There's dress shopping and hair doing and dinner out with dad. And that's no less special when your dad lives in one house and your mom lives in another. In fact, on some level, it becomes that much more special because it means on this one day each year, you get alone time with each of your parents.

Yes, I said each of them. Because the Father/Daughter dance isn't just a night out with dad. It's also an afternoon with mom. And that's all about the girl time. It's about trying on dresses and shoes and stockings. It's about manicures and hairstyles and finding the right something in mom's jewelry box.

And it's about getting to know each other.

That's what my daughter and I did today. We shopped. We groomed. We coiffed. And I learned something I didn't know before.

My diva looks like me. That's not a surprise. She knows she looks like me; I know she looks like me. But I didn't know she was proud of it. She is, though. She's proud to look like her tired, wrinkly, plumply middle-aged, glasses-wearing mama.

I expect that to vanish the second her age ends in "teen." But for now, and for nine, I'm touched.