Stu News and Photos

It's an odd feeling. As I look at the clock, Noelle is just turning 12 years old.

I remember her at about age four, still needing an escort to the bathroom in the middle of the night. One night, when it was my turn to provide her with company while she walked to and from the bathroom, we had a wonderful conversation. After I got her settled back in bed, we stayed up for a while, about an hour, just talking.

At one point, I asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up. Without any perceptible hesitation, she replied, "I want to be a pony."

And here I sit, at 3 o'clock in the morning, missing that little girl so very much.

I love who she's become, and I feel, in some way, that she and I grew up together - she with her adolescence and me with my manhood. But I still miss that tiny girl who actually enjoyed wearing a dress.

I see that this is trite, which I'm not big on, but there's a certain reality to it. I guess that's why movies are so universal - we have that collective unconscious thing going on. So I can feel some of you reading my mind, imagining a four year-old Noelle in a knee-length velvet dress that matched her brown curls. I miss four year-old Noelle.

But that doesn't mean that I don't dig 12 year-old Noelle, as she pours her brains into algebra and Japanese and Constantinople, wearing Harajuku Lovers t-shirts and watching episode after episode of The Simpsons. I dig that a lot.

So, as I reflect on life with Noelle, I have the bitter-sweet conflict of wanting to revel in her growth, while at the same time wanting to encase her in glass and put her on the shelf, freezing her at this stage in her life, so I can have the moment live forever.