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Autumn - self portrait - 2011

I just spent a good hour scouring the internet for a quote to open this post with.  I failed miserably.

Something happened during the last year to Autumn.  It is that rare and extraordinary metamorphosis that involves listening.  Listening to and accepting advice.  I've boiled it down to this because until this past year, they were mutually exclusive from one another.  A fifteen year old will listen to the advice that is offered.  Its the accepting part that is avoided at all costs until a certain magical progression of hormones and brain chemicals align with the stars and the planets.  It is elusive and for some, this happening doesn't come at all.  For others, it takes drastic and caustic measures to force this evolution.

For Autumn, it happened mostly in the past year.  She is a rare soul.  In fact, I've always thought of Autumn as having an old soul.  She knows what she wants and her fearlessness will lead her to that path.  I have the luxury of feeling confident in her ability and in her sound judgement.  Normal rules don't apply to her not because she bucks the system, but because she can play it deftly and effortlessly.

I have never in my life had to ask her to do her homework. Ever.

She isn't a straight A student.  She isn't a perfectionist.  She's a spender like her parents.  She has a stubborn streak that has to come from my father.  She sometimes confuses leadership with bossiness.  She cusses.  She isn't always right, though I pity the fool to try to win that argument.  She is persuasive in such a way that were she so inclined, she would quickly become one of the greatest lawyers or politicians of her time.

You are looking old curtains re-purposed and second generation Magenta (I used to dress as her too!)

She likely will not become either of those.  Because with all her brains and abilities, she is above all else a creator.  Autumn will create art out of a skillfully folded roll of duct tape and some thread.  She slaps her lump of clay on a wheel and in moments will have something that was not there before.

Chip 'n dip platter - 2010

Her love of art, of color and of molding and sculpting and painting and drawing will likely not lead her down a road paved with gold.  She doesn't want that road, she is choosing a way through life whose path has yet to be worn into the forest floor.  She will make her way on her own terms and in her own time.  She said to me a few weeks ago that she doesn't want to be rich or famous.  Then she took that back and said, "Well, I don't want to be rich." 

I can see her ten years from now living quite happily in a small apartment in the city.  Brightly colored walls and hand-made mugs filled with steaming black coffee.  She never adds cream to her coffee.  When she was three her father and I bought an espresso machine.  She would perch herself in a kitchen chair and ask for "Cappuccino please."  We would steam the milk on the machine and give her hot chocolate.  She would sip her cappucinno slowly, pinky extended, small moustache of coco above her lip.  She would close her brown eyes and soak in the flavor.

Autumn at the wheel

I can see her kitchen in shades of purple because yellow isn't her color.  I can see her tattoos and pieircings. For some kids its a phase, but Autumn doesn't follow those.  She's had tattoos on her body all her life, even if they were only in her imagination. When she was two years old we took her to lunch.  Three adults and Autumn.  The waitress stopped by to take our orders and Autumn had a crest-fallen look on her face.  The waitress asked her what was wrong and to which she replied, "My fricking dragon ran away!"  After the adults recovered she then described the dragon in great detail and then said, "When I get big, I'm going to have a dragon tattoo on my belly."  She later insisted that we buy a pack of fake dragon tattoos and for months she walked around with a dragon tattoo on her belly.

Stonewarre coffee mug - 2010

Autumn will live exactly the kind of life she wants.  She always has.  She can create a world unto herself and for that reason alone, I do not doubt her for one second.  Most of my parenting now involves simply staying out of her way.  That she asks me for my opinion or my advice and then listens to what I say is nothing short of a miracle. She doesn't always take the advice, but she hears what others have to say and then weighs her options.   I'd like to say that I taught her that, but I didn't.

This is her Mrs. Lovett costume. She made this from old clothes she ripped apart and re-assembled.

I think most people just stand back and let her do her thing.  Of all the things my oldest child is, the one thing that I admire the most in her is her fearlessness.  That one thing alone will carry her through her life.

I can't find a quote to fit Autumn.  Somehow, that fits her better than anything Maya Angelou could have written.