“Dr Princess” is her nickname.

She’s smart, smarter than me and him stacked, two quote-unquote Gifted Kids with so much potential, two drug addicts who are no longer trying to dumb ourselves down to survive. She’s smarter than we were or are or will be.

She loves dinosaurs AND pre-historic winged reptiles, which are different, evidently. She loves princesses.

“Haha,” my cousin taunted, “you made a girly-girl!”

I shrugged, grinning, bemused, and later kind of honestly furious. Because so? There is this insane idea in my family that I resent pink and it’s fans. That I hate the princess, the diva, the star.

I’m not her, sure. I’m not a her at all. But when and why would I have hated this girl with glamour dripping from her eyes?

I rarely hate, to be honest. I loath, which is different, somehow. Even that, though–usually, no. It takes so much energy, being angry. I save that energy for when it’s really, really warranted, and then expend it all in one or two directions. It rarely is, though. It’s rarely just wow, a trash human being. Usually people are complex.

My daughter’s proof: you can be so many things.

My cousin’s proof: it doesn’t really matter, because she’s a girl.

I do not resent pink.

We have a joke in our household–Dr. Princess will take care of us in our old age. She’ll have a manor that looks like a castle, the Dr. Princess Dream House. She’ll make so much bank she’ll be able to help Baby Boy pay off his guitar, and he can live in her pool house.

Baby Boy and Baby Girl might someday have a complex about this joke. That’s honestly kind of fine, though. Quoth my first sponsor: Everyone with parents is fucked.

Full stop.

Husband gets anxious, sometimes, about her lack of expensive music lessons and house cleaners. Her genius feels like pressure to him. There’s some way we’re failing her, by being poor.

I’m not quite worried about that part. I staunchly, with devotion and grit, believe we are doing a pretty good job, in that department. She has always been free to choose her passions, she has never been pressured into something that might make her shine, shine like a precious stone we show off at parties. She cracks jokes I’d never think of, and laughs often, and I think we are doing pretty good.

I’m not exactly thrilled she’s so smart, always, though.

He doesn’t understand that part. Doesn’t get how much easier it’d be to find happiness if she was kinda daft.

A smart woman is a target.

I know that, and I’m not even a woman.

That doesn’t matter to the folks who shoot at targets.