Fifteen

Photo by Hanne Johnsen taken as part of the Place in Time project, 2002

Every time one of my children has a birthday I find myself saying their age over and over again in an effort to get my head around the fact that they are now that age.  I know I am not the only mother in the world who does this.  

An Adult in the Making exhibition, Christchurch, 2007

Today I have been saying "Fifteen! FIFTEEN! How can you be fifteen?"  because today my daughter turned fifteen.  I looked through some old photos, determined to finally print some off.  There she was in her preschool sheriff phase, then her dinosaur phase, then her space phase and her most recent fangirl phase.  In our photos she wears a stetson long before Matt Smith made them cool, wears a headlamp when baking in a too-dim kitchen, earmuffs when her father and brother are dancing to too-loud music, a winter hat with earflaps which she named Humphrey and a "headsock" which she invented and knitted herself.  I have photos of her with towering Lego creations, earnestly digging for fossils and grinning in the uppermost branches of trees.  She has always been her own girl and long may that last.

Matilda Bay, Perth, 2011

I loved the words Fiona Farrell wrote to go with the photo of my daughter when it was in the "Adult in the Making" exhibition as they suited her so well.  They were "the deeply serious, poignant and thoroughly delightful business of being a child".  What a thoroughly delightful privilege these fifteen years have been for me as my daughter's mother.