Then Christi

Lots of days while my children and grandchildren were growing up, I could be found late at night writing in a journal.  There are some things I wish I had written, but at the time they didn't seem so funny; now they do.  Here are a few things about my beautiful daughter.

Yes, everybody says she is beautiful.  Often, workmen who come to repair something in my house asked who the girl is on my mantle.  One guy I was dating about ten years ago called her “movie star beautiful” and asked if she was married.  Needless to say, he was never invited back.

As a little girl she didn't talk until she was almost three, and then she talked constantly.  One day I told her she had “talked my ears off,” to which she pulled my hair back and said:  “No I didn't, Mommy, they are still there.”

As a child in Lexington, I played outside most days, so did my children.  Neighbors often seemed to be calling me asking me if I knew what Christi was doing.  We had a fenced in back yard so I didn't think there was much she could get into until a neighbor called to tell me that my little four-year-old was walking around on the roof.  We were having work done on our house and someone had left a ladder standing there. Needless to say, her daddy rescued her. 

Then she grew into her teens.

On nights when she was out, I could be found resting on her bed … to be sure she made her curfew.  She said she always heard the click of my Braille watch snap shut the minute she walked in the door.

It was a Saturday afternoon when my next-door neighbor called to say that Christi and her friend were out taking a joy ride on the riding lawnmower … with the blade down, and had made zig-zag patterns all over his yard.  Once she parked the mower, I started chasing her with a switch, fully intending to leave little red stripes on her legs no matter what the law said.  She ran into the house with me closing the gap.  She slammed her bedroom door and locked it, to which I grabbed the little screw driver in my pocket that I used to push the lock every time she did that.  I burst into her room to find only an open window. 

It seems sometimes we chased each other all through her teens; then she was out the door. 

Quite a few years have passed now.  She is still beautiful, and it has been years since those times of chasing each other through growing pains.  We have learned to be there for each other during good times and not so good times.  Now, during most days we can be found sharing our lives via texts and phone calls, discussing everything, including mostly her daughters, or sharing a meal at our favorite restaurant.  One of my favorite places with her is in her car on our way to Church on Sundays.