She has been asking me since she was little when she could get them pierced. According to her, way back then, I told her 10, then when 10 got here, I told her 11. I had plans to tell her 12 when her 11th birthday rolled around. But a visiting grandmother messed that plan up!
Grandma arrived with her usual fanfare of her carry on luggage stuffed with goodies for the kids - from packages of gum, to Suduku books, to the free stuff she and her lady friends win at their meetings (I honestly have no idea what these "meetings" are - but, whatever they don't need, they send for the kids). This trip one of the free items from their meetings was a necklace and earrings that she gave A-girl. As she was getting settled in, she told my 3 girls who have April birthdays, that she would like to take them shopping and pick out their birthday presents while she was here....and, then, she told A-girl she would pay to get her ears pierced.
What? No discussion with the mommy of those cute, perfect little ears?
Nope. The damage was done.
There would be no speech about waiting just one more year. Grandma had made it a reality.
I got my ears pierced when I was 11 - but somehow when it is your child - 11 feels totally different.
We ended up going to a strip mall that had a Claire's. I told the lady what we were there for and she proceeded to hand me a stack of paperwork to sign and initial - basically that I wasn't going to sue them or anything.
Okay. That is comforting.
First I told her that I needed to get a "before" shot and then I announced that I was also going to get "action" shots and then an "after" shot.
Before shot.
Aren't her ears just perfect and wonderful just the way they are...I mean were?
That is the clerk behind A-girl.
As we were walking in, A-girl admits that she is nervous and asks if I will hold her hand.
Are you kidding me? Of course I will!
So, I finished my stack of paperwork and hand it to the clerk - who, while I had been initialing and signing, had cleaned her ears and made little dots on them.
In my head, I had a real mother/daughter event planned. A rite of passage to womanhood. I would hold her hands and comfort her, she would feel better because I was there, we would look deeply into each others eyes, we would remember this moment for all time, because I would have time to get pictures of all of this.....but instead.....
I never got to hold her hand.
We didn't look deeply into each other's eyes.
I barely got this picture.
It was really as fast as a blink of an eye - or in this case, a piercing of an ear - I handed over my paperwork, looked down to get my camera from A-girl's lap to get ready for our big moment together and I looked up to see this!
The lighting is bad...oh, and that is our van just outside the window!
Notice that A-girl's face looks kind of shocked too.
It happened so fast that Grandma, who was paying for this momentous event was off looking at earrings and didn't even know it had happened either!
I don't remember how much my ear piercing cost. I remember the sound of the gun next to my first ear scared me though. The guns are much different now and don't make any noise. You get a choice of about 30 earrings you can put in - for a price. I am pretty sure my choices were silver little ball thingie or gold little ball thingie. The cheapest ones were around $17.00 which is what we went with. The most expensive were about $42.00.
I have decided that perhaps for the next three daughter's piercings I will either go someplace else or I will make sure I do not go at a busy time of day. The clerk was the only one working, so while she was piercing, she also seemed to be looking over her shoulder for shoplifters the whole time and would every now and then yell out, "I will be right there!"
I hope this is not the first of many disappointments in mother/daughter event times that I have painted in my head!
She does look beautiful though, doesn't she?
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