So It Goes: Magic spray not working

I know this for a fact because she lost her first tooth recently.

And no one who gets sprayed with magic spray that keeps you just the way you are for ever is supposed to be losing teeth.

Isn't losing a tooth a sign of growing up?

My grand daughter is quite tolerant of the increasingly heavy doses of imaginary and invisible spray that I have been delivering lately.  She lets me spray her all over and even in her mouth (this was in a bid to solidify the wriggly tooth).

But no, time has a way of pushing imaginary sprays away and making five year old girls into six year girls, albeit six year old girls with teeth missing.

She wonders why I don't want her to change.  She can't understand why I am not as excited as she is about having about 20 babies (she has a different intended husband every week) and a pet unicorn.  She can't wait to become a vet, live on a farm and start a magnificent menagerie.

She looks at a future surrounded with stars and wonder and fairy dust.  She laughs aside my not-growing-up spray and gives me that tolerant look all five year old girls reserve for a grandmother that is a little bit silly.

She doesn't see how quickly the years can pass. She probably feels she has been a prep student for ages, while I wonder where this year has gone.  Sometimes I wonder where this month, this week, this day has gone.

And I remember when I was her age thinking of a day as for ever and a week (especially a school week) as something that never ended.

And while she is excited about the loss of her first tooth, I dig food out of the gap between mine and wonder when this started happening.  Her next 10 years and mine seem very different - she at the beginning of a wonderful life and me now firmly past the hump.  She’s growing taller while I, the girl who was the tallest in the class, seem to be looking up at the world more and more.  

I think that if she doesn't want that magic spray, it might be time to turn a bit of imaginary spray on me.

- Linda Muller