detangling M

I was standing by the counter this noon, waiting for the toaster to ding, when I noticed what I'd hurriedly written on the shopping list last night: M detangler.  I meant the spray that helps me comb out the 7-year-old's long, wispy hair, but I was struck by how very convenient it would be to have an "M detangler."  Any product disentangling the complicated web that is a child would rake in the maternal cash, but for the one minor-but-essential detail that it could never be a mass-produced formula.  After all, every kid would require a unique detangling solution.

There's nothing quite as simultaneously thrilling and disconcerting as another, smaller creature who looks and talks and behaves an awful lot like you... and yet is completely, eternally, incomprehensibly different.  Biological or adopted, observation indicates that children tend to wind up amazingly similar to--and yet strikingly different from--their parents.  Ours is no exception.  She may give my mother deja vu and proclaim her love of history from the metaphorical rooftops (so proud), but I'll be hanged if I'll ever figure her out.

Fortunately for me and for the rest of us stumbling through the realm of parenting, that appears to be how these things are supposed to work.  Thank goodness for the promise that God knew her even before she was mine.  I may never detangle my M, but I can rest assured she's well provided for!