She is four-parts sweetness and sass, confidence and concern.
This girl I know loves to dance. Sometimes it’s in tune with those around her; often it’s to a rhythm that only she can hear. And I, in my perpetual count-following timed-step, am in awe of her ability to completely sidewind the expected and leap.
She is a defender of the meek. She cannot stomach injustice and will make it known when the scales have tipped too far one way or the other. She is a fierce friend and, although she bickers daily with her brother, she will make you bleed if you cross him.
She is a giver, a constant maker of gifts, which she bestows on her loved ones with a genuine wish to make them happy, to see them smile. She can make a keepsake out of anything: a drawing, a dried flower, a Doritos wrapper.
For Christmas, she asked Santa for wood. Literally, just the word “wood” written in endearing third-grade scrawl above “tiny baby chicks” and a basket for them to live in. So far, she has made several boxes, a game like bowling with bumpers, and a two-story mansion for her gerbil.
Animals flock to her. Some say it’s because she’s small and unthreatening. I think it’s because they can sense a kinship. There is a part of her that will always be wild.
She’s funny in a way that kids often aren’t, with a keen awareness of the world’s oddities and asymmetries and how to use them to make you laugh.
When she grows up she wants to be an Engineer/Astronaut/Chef/Teacher – not individually, but a collective role in which she designs the space craft, mans it, prepares excellent dehydrated fare, and teaches others how to do the same. To boldly go where no O’Neal has gone before. If there is one of us who can, it’s her.
She can find a friend anywhere. The ball field, the beach, in line at the dry cleaners. She has zero hesitation about going up to another child and asking them to play. It’s a confidence that I envy, a welcoming spirit that I adore.
She loves her dad the best, and that’s okay. I’ve known this for many years. She told me on one occasion that I’m just a half behind. A half what, I don’t know. I never asked. Because there’s something about a girl and her daddy that I don’t want to disturb. She loves to join him at the go-kart track, to help him work on cars and use power tools, to grill alongside him, to let him teach her about baseball and to critique her brother’s swings with him.
Yet there are moments when she shoos the boys away so that we can have time for “just us girls.” Time to watch funny TikToks or look at cute puppy pictures or play with makeup and crazy hairstyles. And in those moments, I want to wrap her up and keep her eight forever. But she’s nine today, and then she’ll be ten and twenty, and before I know it she’ll be grown, and all of her pieces will meld together into an amazing, wonderful whole. I can’t wait to see who she’ll become; I could also wait forever.
But for now, she’s eight plus three-sixty-five, a little girl in a princess dress who made us all complete.
