Crossing the line...My daughter the bag lady...

One day last week, when the humidity was crushing, Izzy wanted to wear a dark blue velvet dress.
Izzy: "Why can't I wear this dress? I love this dress, it's my favourite dress..."(tears beginning to well in her eyes, daddy's iron will beginning to falter)
Daddy: "It's crazy hot outside, if you wear that dress, you'll melt."
Izzy: "I'll be fine, it's not too hot for this dress."
Daddy: "If you wear that velvet dress in this weather, you're going to sweat like a pig."
Izzy:(Her look had gone from pleading to confusion and resolve in a flash and she said with all sincerity) "Daddy, pigs don't wear blue dresses."


Now I don't want to give the impression that Izzy is all sunshine and smiles, she is not. She is my child after all. Anyone that knows me, know what a complete and utter brooding bastard I can be and my daughter is following me in spades. Thankfully, she also has her mother's hair trigger temper so thing are nicely balanced between rage and black moods. That does not however excuse what I have done...there is nothing my child, anybody's child could have or will ever do that will forgive the horror that I visited upon Isobel. It is not something a civilized, educated man would do. It is ugly and atavistic and I wish I could do something to take it back.
It was a stifling hot day, the kind of heat that would make a dog mean. Izzy had been playing with some of her toys and had been stock piling them in little cache's around the house and I thought it was time to put a stop to it so I told her it was time to clean up. By about the third time of asking her to clean up, she was rolling on the floor feigning illness and beginning to weep.
"But daddy, I don't feel too good for picking up my things, oooohhh..." She was full on crying now. And that's when it happened.
"Quit crying or I'll give you something to cry about." The look on her face told me I may as well have kicked her in the stomach and told her, "Your Mother was drunk the first weekend she was pregnant with you." My head was spinning and waves of hot guilt were washing over me like high tide against a break wall. I crumpled and fell to the floor, disgusted that I had just become my mother. Right there and then... I was wagging fingers and hitting my brother and sister with a hot wheels track and sprouting chestnuts like "Don't you be smart with me" and screaming at the top of my lungs "DO YOU HEAR ME!!!???!?!" I offered to buy Izzy a pony if she could find it in her heart to forgive me and I think for the time being I have assuaged her fragile ego but I know this is going to bite me on the ass in about eighteen years...well, ponies are nice.


On of Izzy favourite games is to play dress up and wander around talking to her friends. Imaginary all of them, though some are actually dolls and puppies and various other stuffed creations. She does not have tea parties or social functions or other things I have seen little kids do with their imaginary friends. Izzy puts on most, if not all of her dress up clothes and wanders around putting things-treasures into old purses that Mrs. Narrator has given her. All the while she talks and mutter to herself in a sort of tape loop. Over and over and over. And it struck me as odd and somehow familiar but I couldn't quite put a finger on where I had seen this behaviour before. Then it dawned on me...I had seen this sort of thing with dozens of homeless ladies across the country...my daughter is playing at being a bag lady. Her mother must be so proud...