My Twelve Year Old Brave Writer

She’s hovering, constantly balancing dichotomies:

Vigorous movement with deep stillness
(literally jumping, with profound perception)
Beautiful and serene with persistent agitation
(like a magnificent landscape with mosquitoes buzzing)
Warm and tenderly vulnerable but with defensively cynical walls up
Fiercely glad she’s unique and different meanwhile feeling lonely and peerless
A probing, pondering sage, that questions everything but decides based on intuition
Instinctively nurturing, outrageously affectionate, while a defiant and resolute fighter
Both an organic farmer scooping manure and an elegant ballroom dancer
Both naturally domestic and a passionate crusader
Enthusiastic but skeptical, needy but independent
Brilliant but with some learning challenges
Non-competitive but with high standards
An unwilling finisher but an eager starter
A traveler at heart but usually at home
Contained yet exploding.

No wonder dealing with her is like walking on a tight rope:
it is challenging, rewarding, and dangerously easy to slip up.

Polly Castor
7/7/09