Madeleina Growing Up Again

Sometimes she's a nine-year-old. Sometimes she's 35. She's always herself. But then sometimes I can't help but notice that she's actually growing up. A couple of weeks ago she asked me for curlers. I bought her what I found, a box of heat curlers. She liked them, then had her mom buy her the kind you just roll into your hair. Along with volumizing shampoo and a fancy root awakening conditioner. And a tube of blazing brunette, whatever that does. And then, after the curlers and the shampoo and other girly things started cluttering up our bathroom windowsill, suddenly she's got this grown up woman's hair that she tucked into a pony tail that shimmered in the sun as it sashayed just behind her, swinging side to side, all wavy and lustrous and chic.
    Then this morning she came in and sat at the couch behind my desk. "Dad," she said, "you have to stop smoking."
    "I know. It's not good for me..."
    "I'm talking about the smell dad. We smell. We both smell like your cigarettes. I don't mind it because I'm used to it, but when I go to school, I know that some people probably notice it and I can't have that anymore. I don't want to be the one who stinks. And dad, face it, you smell like cigarettes."
    How could I respond to that? She's 100 percent right, and even though I limit my smoking to the office here in the house, some of it probably snakes around corners and gets on her and everything else.  So how could I answer? Best way I could. Sheepishly I said, "Some people like the musky smell of smoke on clothes..."
    "I am not going to marry a French guy, dad," she deadpanned.
    And that was that.
    My baby's growing up.