Well, okay, she's not a doctor. My beautiful, loving, and often cantankerous daughter +Maddie Cramer turned 15 years old today. She starts high school this fall and the future is wide open to whatever she wants to be. I look at her, as tall as I am at 5'10" and some change, and watch her blossoming into a young woman. For the first time since she was two years old, she is living with me full time and I welcome every up and down that comes with the territory. It's her birthday, but I already got the biggest gift. So, as she goes through high school and considers the future, I look forward to supporting her on her path to becoming an artist, a businesswoman, a chef, or even, from when she was six years old in the story below, a doctor.
My Daughter, The Doctor (July 2006)
I was feeling a little under the weather so I put a movie in for my daughter and lay down on the couch. Part way through the movie she came up to me and said she’d take care of me.
“Aww, cute” I thought.
She proceeded to climb up on top of me sticking her knee into my upset stomach and squishing my arm. “Ooph!” But it was only for a second and she settled in.
“Let me look at your eyes.” she said. Then she pressed her thumb into the top of my right eyelid and peeled it up and around the back of my head.
“A little more gentle doctor!” I told her.
“Okay.” She took the other eyelid and peeled it up only so far as my forehead. Then she put a small plastic compact on top of my left eye with the mirror facing down. As I peered into my eye at close range she told me to “Say ahh!” and looked into my mouth. “I know what you need to feel better.” she told me, and then disappeared up the stairs. “You need a baby in your stomach. That will make you feel better.” she called down.
“Huh?”
She came down the stairs with one of her baby-dolls and shoved it underneath my t-shirt. She crawled on top of me again, and this time pushed the “new baby” into my stomach with her knee.
“Ooph!” I repeated. “Careful doctor.”
She then pulled the blanket down off the back of the couch to cover me up – taking special care to double it up on top of me so as to block out 100% of the very nice feeling air conditioning. “Whew…”
“Here Dad, lift up your head.” and she pulled my head up off the pillow. She took out a plastic silver beaded necklace with a large purple jeweled amulet and secured it around my neck.
“Thanks honey.”
“You nap Dad. You’ll feel better now.”
As she went back to play with her Barbies and watch the movie, I laid my newly bejeweled head back down on the pillow and closed my stretched out sore eyelids imagining how funny I must look underneath a ton of blankets on a hot summer evening with the air conditioning blowing.
But you know what? I have to admit that my eyelids, once they snapped back into place, totally took my mind of the headache that I had. And the plastic baby-doll under my shirt felt nice and cool against my skin, plus the pressure of the blankets and baby-doll on my stomach made the queasiness feel better.
Who knew? My six-year-old daughter the doctor, that’s who.?
Happy Birthday to My Daughter, the Doctor
Well, okay, she’s not a doctor. My beautiful, loving, and often cantankerous daughter +Maddie Cramer turned 15 years old today. She starts high school this fall and the future is wide open to whatever she wants to be. I look at her, as tall as I am at 5’10” and some change, and watch her blossoming into a young woman. For the first time since she was two years old, she is living with me full time and I
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