THE FAERIES
My mother arrived in town Saturday evening with two sleepy faeries in tow.
Amber has a new friend, Antoinette. Isn’t that adorable, Amber & Antoinette? Well, the adorable cuteness doesn’t end at the names. My daughter Amber has always been a petite little thing and even at nineteen that hasn’t changed. Antoinette is a petite little thing too and if it weren’t for the fact that that she’s half Filipino and half Puerto Rican – therefore has a honey brown skin bronze, and Amber weren’t white as alabaster, they could be mistaken for sisters or at least close cousins.
Robert's Hammock has seen a LOT of action since it got hung up. The girls seem to love it and hog it all the time. Here is Antoinette and Amber chillin'.
Here are all of the girlies that were in the house Sunday Antoinette, Nichole, Amber and Jade, being silly and tipping just far enough to worry me. Little brats! Antoinette and Amber were small enough and Jade has grown so much that they were borrowing her sweater, that green/blue sweater is Jades, look how well it fits Antoinette!
When those girls walked into the house the needle on the cute meter went into danger zone. On top of being so adorable, they are both going to the same stylist academy in Virginia Beach, so they came armed with make-up, scissors, flattening irons and all sorts of stuff. It took them a solid two and a half hours to get ready to go out the door yesterday, partly because neither of them can focus for very long either. They both have the same flighty inspirations to shout, giggle, poke, fart (Amber), burp, gulp, slurp, make faces, barge into rooms (Amber), whisper questions of a private nature (Antoinette) and run around being generally silly. They inspire each others silliness too. Every little impulse to do something is amplified because they both start doing it.
After they got all ready to go they left a cloud of hairspray, perfume and makeup dust in the room Will walked into the house yesterday just after they’d finished and he grinned and laughed quietly and said, “It smells like a French bordello in here.” Heh.
Amber and Antoinette deciding for the fourth time what shirt would go best over Amber's bathing-suit top. See their PILE of junk by the wall?
They finally settled on this pink shirt, which looked super cute on Bertie, and of COURSE Antointte had to do her eyes to match.
Amber is good at what she is learning to do. Color, cut and style hair along with all of the other things a stylist does. She is going to be a part of an industry I, in part, despise. Yet, I am still proud of her and I struggle with these tiny internal battles of right and wrong and supporting my daughter. I can’t help but be proud of her. Also, something Will pointed out to me that I hadn’t really thought of, is that Amber will take with her the things I have imparted. She would never be a stylist who would suggest a nose job or encourage a boob job. She would never make somebody feel ugly or stupid and she would never push things on somebody they didn’t really want. In some ways this might make her a poor salesperson, but it will make her a unique stylist and it will make her a good human and bring her much good karma. She loves clothes and make-up and she’s got a keen eye for up to the minute fashion. She has a great sense of balance and color – I like to think I had a little something to do with that J I’m especially glad she has found something she enjoys doing and looks forward to doing. There is nothing worse than waking up to do a job you hate, no matter how well it pays.
Antoinette's cool job on her eyes. She's going to be quite the make-up artist.
Antoinette straigtening Amber's hair - some of which isn't even hers. In fact she AND Antoinette have something in common besides being petite and cute - most of their hair is "tracks" or a sort of weave with real hair. I couldn't believe it since it looked so friggin' REAL, I would have had no idea if they hadn't told me. Antointte's hair just looks lightened and Ambers all blends totally. They're both doing well at school. The funny thing is that they met at the academy in Virginia Beach and had no idea that each were from Waldorf! TOO FUNNY!
Amber has grown up in the past months. She looks a little different, but when she is here, in many ways, she acts like she’s little.
The more Amber grows into a woman, the more I learn about myself and especially about my old self. The lessons are nestled in my heart in a place that only Amber can occupy.
It was such a strange sensation to look out the window into the back yard at my daughter and her friend traipsing around the yard and swinging in the hammock. They are so pretty and sassy and sexy in that young-girl-who-doesn’t-quite-know-how-to-wield-her-sexiness kind of way. I don’t really know how to describe it, other than to say it’s like the sexiness itself sometimes controls the girls, in a obvious superficial surface kind of way, like the sexiness possesses them, rather than they possesses it. If I had been a young woman and didn’t know them, they were the kinds of girls I might have been jealous of (back when I used to get jealous) and to see my daughter and her friend, who keeps calling me “moms” and plopping down beside me or Robert, is such a strange feeling inside. It sort of helps me grow more as a person because it gives me such a different perspective. Most women my age don’t really get to enjoy this unusual and enlightening perspective because most women my age don’t have a daughter creeping up on twenty years old. In my eyes, she is still a child. Antoinette is a child, only they aren’t.
Stranger still was the sensation of feeling like I wasn’t much older than them. I watched them being silly and primping and chatting and realized I didn’t feel far from that place. Like this girl couldn’t be my child, because I still feel like nineteen in many ways.
What an interesting way to learn things about myself, through my daughter. I’m always glad though that I never try to live vicariously through her. She and I have both seen much of that as she has gotten older and some of her friends have had parents who try to control so many aspects of their lives in order to be more a part of them. I want to be a part of Amber’s life, but I don’t ever want her to do something for MY sake, I only want her to be happy and fulfilled.
One of my mom’s favorite things to do is to take us all out to dinner when she comes up. So we all went to Sakura, a place with Japanese cuisine, which I highly recommend. They make the best fried rice I’ve ever eaten, or at least as good as my dads.
Here a few photos of us all at Sakura and the chef cooking, which is the totally COOLEST part. The one of my mom is just GOOFY. Will took it while she was talking about the rum content of some drinks. She liked the rum content of her GEISHA and proceeded to be goofy the rest of the night until she finally passed out at home. That pic was so funny I had to post it, even if it is a bit grainy.
I forgot to tell ya’ll about the GREAT play I saw at the H Street Playhouse – “Headman’s Holiday” – it was so AWESOME. It closed this past weekend. The direction was incredible and the acting was fabulous. It was professional theatre, so it’s expected to be good, but lord knows I’ve been to a couple professional shows I didn’t care for. This was NOT one of them.
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