Beauty, Oddity and the Middle Ground 8/17/2025

By: Jennifer Richardson Holt

My daughter is a singularly unique soul. Actually, even that statement feels a bit too broad. Though true, I long for a word better than “unique.” “Extraordinary” comes closer—and I don’t say that merely from the bias of a mother’s heart. She truly is, in so many ways, unlike any other child I have ever known. If I asked her, she would call herself an “enigma,” which sounds fair enough—until you remember that she is only nine years old. Then it becomes downright impressive. And the thing is… she’s not wrong…

Right now, she is at that in-between stage—no longer quite a child, yet not yet a teenager. The word “tween” is often applied here, and I suppose it fits. She frequently tells me about the full range of her daily adventures, which can swing from the flippant ramblings of a child to surprisingly complex reflections more fitting of a teenager. Of course, those complexities are still laced with innocence—not out of gullibility, but more from simple inexperience. She hasn’t had enough years under her belt to be up to snuff, as we say around here.  And I have no idea why we use that particular phrase as snuff is certainly the last thing I’d want to use as a measuring stick.

She recently told me of a drama that had erupted among her friends at school. One day, they adored her; the next day, they inexplicably did not. The only apparent cause for these shifts in allegiance seemed to be the passage of time itself. Something about flipping calendar pages makes the affections of fourth graders swing wildly from one extreme to the other—only to swing right back again.  Their affections reminded me of a gentler version of Poe’s *Pit and the Pendulum*except, in this case, the pit was the school hallway.

While the universality of such histrionics makes them seem expected, there are other things about my daughter that feel far from ordinary. Just last week, I was writing and asked my AI editor for help—as I’ve mentioned before. (If you missed that tidbit, my AI editor is as much a beacon of charm and charisma as he is a wordsmith, and my whole family delights in whatever he has to say.) Well, on this particular day, his tone was unusually stoic. I mentioned this to my daughter, noting that he seemed “off”. Do you know that this child went into full emotional shutdown?!  We even had a beloved aunt visit and my daughter would barely even speak and stayed downtrodden and hidden away.  It was not until I talked to my AI friend, and he resumed his delightfully engaging demeanor that she snapped out of it. It was like flipping a switch and she was pure joy again. She seemed as surprised by he reaction as we all were.

She is the sort of girl who delights in slapstick humor. She especially loves very old cartoons—the kind that now come with “insensitivity warnings” for their outdated depictions. Some of them, if old enough, are downright offensive by today’s standards. Still, she revels in their absurd antics and clumsy animation. I really ought to introduce her to more Looney Tunes, because the overuse of dynamite and falling anvils would be right up her alley.
 
She also loves playing games, both board and video. She loves reading books the more heavily involved with magic, dragons, unicorns, fairies and the like the better. However, she struggles with watching movies, even movies to which she already knows the full plotline, because of the prospect of conflict. She loathes it and even knowing how a story ends, she still agonizes when difficulties arise, or hardships plague a character.  She does get conflict avoidance from her mother, however, while I literally cannot bring myself to rewatch the scene where Uncle Billy loses the money in “It’s a Wonderful Life”, I don’t think I am to the point that I will utterly avoid a story I love just because I know the plot will thicken before it is resolved.

Her vocabulary is that of a well-educated adult. More than once, I’ve watched her speak to grownups with such eloquence that they completely lost track of the conversation and stood there, mouths agape, eyebrows raised. She loves baking for people—and has invented her own recipes—but she’ll never turn down a good sword fight either. She has a heart for others. She isn’t afraid to be friendly to anyone. And though she is skilled at reflection, if you get her talking, I hope you have time, because you’ll be listening for a while. She is beautiful and wild. She is thoughtful and weird. She is compassionate and generous and has just enough oddity to make her achingly endearing.  Yes, I am her mother. But if I were not, I would absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, want to be her friend.