She entered the kitchen with a grand sweep of her arm and a sashay of sorts, declaring her arrival, demanding our attention. Once she was certain all eyes were on her, she spun a quick pirouette on the tip of a toe painted with turquoise polish, her skirt twirling out around her. She came to a stop with her hand planted boldly on her hip, and her chin tilted up, and I wonder how such a tender young sprout collected such sass and charisma.
"Look at you, you look beautiful" He told her.
With a grin pulled up just a bit higher on one side than the other, and eyes that twinkled like she was guarding a great secret, she said, "I know" Her words ringing out like bells, her eyebrows raised expectantly.
There was no pretense or humility. No embarrassment or struggle with how to wrestle the compliment into her heart. Only recognition of a truth she knows sure as the beating of her heart.
My heart swelled until I couldn't swallow.
And that, THAT is how you take a compliment.
She said, "I know"
***
We were somewhere past the cream cheese, on our way to the eggs when we pulled up alongside my high school English teacher.
She asked my girl, "Are you in school?"
"I go to ballet school" she chirped, sitting taller in the shopping cart.
"Oh how wonderful, are you going to be a ballerina?"
Without skipping a beat or batting an eye, she set the record straight, she said, "I AM a ballerina"
And I chuckled a little under my breath because this little one, oh she already knows, and I hope always remembers, that you are exactly who you know you are, who you say you are, who you believe you are. That's what makes it so.
And she owned it.