My Madeleina, Growing Up

My Madeleina keeps growing up. Yesterday, while I was doing all those manly things, like collecting and then dumping garbage bags, and raking collecting leaves, Madeleina was not helping a lot. When she helped she sat next to one of the seven piles of leaves and talked with them before she put them in the bag. Good for spirit communication, bad for getting work done.
This morning, with just a couple of piles left to collect, she said she couldn't help. "I can't be the one who puts them in a bag and curtails their freedom by making them 'fence mulch', dad. It just isn't in my blood."
Half-an-hour later, while I was in the middle of a pod cast interview to the Ukraine about ayahuasca, she found it in her heart to pass me a note that read: "As Queen of this Empire, I declare that you have to go to the corner store and buy me the biggest chocolate ice cream cone they sell. NOW....or ELSE...."
Well, that put me in my place and I read the note over the radio and Madeleina said that since I'd made the pronouncement to all who would hear the podcast, I definitely owed her the cone.
I got it as soon as I finished the radio show.
Tomorrow a guest is coming in to stay for a week or so. So I told Madeleina that we needed to clean the house, and in particular, one room, the room the guest will stay in. She looked at me quizzically. "Dad. Let's face it. If they're your friend, they're already impressed with you. And so you can't do any wrong. So I don't need to clean to impress anyone. And if they're not your friend, you have to ask why the hell you invited them here into our home? I mean, if you need to impress them with cleanliness, then what's the point, eh?"
She's a clever little demon, isn't she?
But then she's also a kid. After we fast walked a couple of miles and were at the store buying lots and lots of vegetables and fruit, she met me at the truck. "Dad, I saw so many of my friends today it was unbelievable!"
She ran down the people she knows whom she'd run into. Then she changed tac.
"I was getting some acne sponges and in the aisle was a girl, probably 13, who looked like she was dealing with pimples for the first time. She was reaching for things but when she saw me looking at her she put them back. I finally walked up to her and told her, 'Don't worry. We all have a few pimples when we're thirteen. You'll get over it.' "
I just looked at her for a moment. This is a girl who was just getting her first pimples six or nine months ago. Now she's the expert, helping a newcomer through the ordeal.
Well, all I can do is smile. That's my baby. And I'm keeping her. She's the best. Crazy, perfect in the same breath, without a comma.
Thanks for being my baby, baby. My world wouldn't be at all as rich if I didn't know you, Madeleina.