7-Year-Old Wisdom

Mack's mom is in the Philippines for work this week, and before she left she gave me an assignment to wash Laila's hair. Normally, I think that a 7-year-old should wash their own hair, but I like Laila and her mom and so I do everything they tell me.

Laila has a mane of hair, long wavy hair that is such a rich brown color it makes wood jealous. It qualifies as luscious. I would love to have her hair, but after last night, I realized I would also love to have her life.

While she sat in the tub gabbing about how she'd played with not just one friend but two and how she spent the afternoon in the hot tub and the pool and how the day was just so much fun that when her mom called she had to tell her hi-bye so she could get back to her insanely wonderful life, I sat on the edge of it, trying to get the temperature just right and planning how I was going to wash and condition her hair without getting a drop of water on her forehead or -- god forbid -- near her eyebrows. She was carefree, completely solid in the fact that she was just going to live life and other people would make sure she was fed food she likes and didn't go around smelling like the inside of a shoe.

I asked her, "Laila, why don't you wash your own hair?"

"Holding my arms up for that long makes them tired." Then she looked at me like I just fell from outer space and that these questions, these ideas that I have, they need to stop annoying her or I will not be given the privilege of washing her hair again this lifetime. Clearly, she cannot be asked to exert precious energy on holding her arms over her head for 38 seconds when that energy would be better used playing for 14 hours a day.

Then she said, "Besides, when you're in the bath you're supposed to relax." And she is right, which is precisely why someone better be showing up to wash my hair every other day or I quit.