Happy Birthday, Eleanor

And so she came, this utterly unexpected and treasured little pixie girl with a fiery heart who would have been called Edgar had she been a boy.  She's very interested in this part of her birth: our unknowing, whereas we knew with Oliver and Iris that it would be a boy and a girl.  She surprises herself, I think, with her desires for excitement and her yearnings for tenderness.  She sucks her thumb and twiddles your ear, but she'll kick your ass if you mess with the hotel for runaway dolls she's just built.  She loves the song "Maggie's Farm" but the Rage Against the Machine version (!!!), not Bob Dylan's. She does ballet and craves "Rocky and Bullwinkle."  She learned to walk early, and nursed late. She can't stand to be alone, but you are hers alone when she wants you. She moves in constellation with her brother and sister, and I watch in awe as her galvanizing force moves them. Did I think of Eleanor of Aquitaine when I wasn't thinking she was an Edgar? Yes. And now she is five years old, and newly conscious - of memories and ambitions and things she wants to accomplish.  Read, go to the Hindu Kush, be a pony rider (these were read at her pre-K graduation last night).  I love you, Eleanor, my bright flower.