7. Birdie’s Day Out
Birdie's Day Out
WYATT
"Daddy, it goes the other way."
"Which other way?"
"The other other way. Like how Suzie's looked."
I was standing behind my daughter in the bathroom with a comb in one hand and a hair tie between my teeth, trying to recreate something Birdie had described to me three times using only the words twisty, pretty, and like a princess.
Suzie Park sat next to Birdie in class and apparently came to school yesterday with her hair in some kind of braided updo that changed Birdie's entire understanding of what hair could do. She'd been talking about it since she woke up.
"Okay." I pulled the comb through again and gathered everything to one side. "What if we do it like a—"
"No, Daddy. You're pulling too hard."
"Sorry." I loosened my grip and tried again. I wrapped a section over another section like I'd seen women do at the school pickup line, and somehow ended up with a knot that looked more like a rope splice than anything that belonged on a six-year-old's head.
Birdie turned around and looked at herself in the mirror, tilting her head left, then right.
"You're so bad at this, Daddy."
I laughed. "I know. I'm sorry. Can we just do a ponytail today?"
"Okay! But can I wear the bow Barb got me?"
"That we can do."
I undid the mess, combed her hair smooth, pulled it into the ponytail I could do with my eyes closed, and clipped the bow on top.
Birdie smiled as she leaned into the mirror and saw the pink bow peeking out from the top of her head. "Thank you, Daddy." I let out a sigh of relief. After ten minutes of losing a fight with my six-year-old's hair, the ordeal was finally over.
Birdie hopped off the step stool and walked to her cabinet to pick out which purse she was carrying today. I watched her pull one out, hold it up, put it back, reach for another.
I tried not to think about it. But she'd asked for something this morning that another girl's mother probably did in three minutes, and I turned it into a knot.
She was six. She thought it was funny. She wouldn't think it was funny forever.
Someday she'd stop laughing about the ponytail and start needing what she actually asked for, and I still wouldn't know how to do it.
I put the comb down, walked over to her, and crouched down to kiss the top of her head. "Let's go."
The bookstore a few blocks over was one of our Saturday spots. Birdie liked the children's section.
She pulled me by the hand through the door, past the front display, past the YA shelves, and straight to the back corner where the chapter books lived. She already knew where she was going.
"These ones, Daddy." She pointed at a row of books with white spines and pastel details. "These are the ones Suzie has."
Nancy Drew Notebooks. I pulled one off the shelf and turned it over. Girl detective. Mysteries.
"Suzie said there's one where Nancy Drew catches a real thief. And one where she finds a lost dog. And one where there's a mystery at a birthday party." Birdie was pulling books off the shelf two at a time, stacking them in my arms. "Can I get them all?"
"How about we start with three?"
"Five?"
"Three."
"Four?"
I looked at her. She looked at me with the wide eyes that had been ending negotiations since she was two.
"Four."
She sat down on the carpet right there in the aisle and started flipping through the first one, telling me about each chapter title before she'd read a single page.
Nancy Drew was apparently eight years old, solved real crimes, and had a best friend named George, which Birdie thought was hilarious because George was a boy's name and George was a girl.
"Daddy, do you think Nancy Drew is real?"
"I think she's a character in a book."
"But someone could do that, right? Solve mysteries? A girl could do that?"
"Absolutely."
She picked her four and talked me through every one: Suzie's recommendation, a cool cover, the birthday mystery because she needed to know what happened, and the ballet one because she liked the outfits. Then she carried them to the register herself.
I watched her walk up to the counter with her stack, barely able to see over the top, telling the cashier which one she was going to read first. She was explaining the entire plot of a book she hadn't opened yet, based entirely on what Suzie told her at lunch on Thursday.
My daughter was becoming her own person.
She had opinions I didn't give her, interests that started in conversations I wasn't part of, a best friend whose mother could send her daughter to school looking like a princess.
Every week she came home with something new.
A fact, a preference, a word she learned from someone who wasn't me.
The world she was building had rooms I'd never been inside.
It was beautiful to watch. It terrified me in equal measure.
We walked home the long way, past Daphne's shop.
"Can we get flowers, Daddy?"
This was our routine. Every time we passed the shop, Birdie stopped. Daphne kept a bucket of small bundles near the door. Stems trimmed from larger arrangements, wrapped in brown paper, priced for six-year-olds with big eyes.
"Hi, Birdie!" Daphne's face appeared over a bucket of gladiolus. "What are we picking today?"
Birdie crouched by the bucket, inspecting her options with the seriousness she gave everything. She pulled out a bundle of yellow daisies, held them up, put them back, and picked up pink ones instead.
"These."
"Good choice." Daphne wrapped them in fresh paper and handed them down. "Those will brighten up any room." She leaned over the counter and pointed. "I love that bow, by the way."
Birdie's face lit up. "Barb got it for me!"
"Well, Barb has great taste."
I paid and handed Birdie the flowers. "Thanks, Daphne."
She smiled. "I always look forward to visits from Birdie."
I took the bag of books so Birdie could carry her flowers in one hand and hold mine with the other.
"I'm so excited to be a hobbet for Halloween! Can I carry the ring?"
"A hobbit. And yes, the whole night."
She grinned. We'd been planning for Halloween since August when I got her picture books of Lord of the Rings and she thought the hobbits looked silly.
Halloween was our night, the two of us in costumes that only made sense together, walking the neighborhood until her legs gave out and I carried her the rest of the way home.
We turned the corner onto our street. Birdie was telling me about a Nancy Drew mystery where someone hid a clue inside a pumpkin, a detail I was fairly sure she'd invented, when I saw her.
Andy Walsh.
On her front porch in shorts and a T-shirt, book in her lap, feet up on the railing. The late afternoon sun was catching her hair and the smooth skin on her bare legs. I was going to pretend I didn't notice.
I could cross the street. Say something. She'd give me that look and I'd enjoy every second of it.
But Birdie was already pulling me toward the door.
"Can we read the first chapter before dinner, Daddy? Please?"
"Just the first chapter."
I let my daughter pull me inside and closed the door behind us.