Seventeen

Seventeen years ago today, Allie Dawn Helms was born. She was not the first girl child on either side, she was the second, but it had been a long while. I was relieved because I hadn't expected to pull that off.

She had an air about her baby self that was different from her male siblings in some indefinable way. She had startlingly blue eyes like her father, and they sat largely in her little baby face as she gazed at us quietly - as if we were bugs.

Allie is still quiet in all social settings, including family ones. I assumed it was because she is the runt of the litter, but she says it is because no one listens to her. Wince.

When Ben discovered she was fun, they began to enact a game with characters named "John and Mac". Two days later they would reprise these roles as "Cut and Neosporin". In addition to that role, she also was allowed to play nurse in Luke's elaborate backyard Civil War re-enactments. She once helped with (got in the way of) a fort building mission - in a princess costume.

She spent many an hour in the crab apple tree, swinging on the lowest branch and eating crab apples with Ruby the Pig. Once, she abandoned the tree to swing on the dog's new pen, but fell from it, banging her head on the concrete below. As I inspected the considerable knot, she sniffed, "I hit my head on the concrete. It was hard as a rock."

The day she spotted a handicapped dog attached to wheels, she was so captivated she asked, "I wonder if he bites his own tires."

"I wonder if other dogs chase him."

Then singing:

"The wheels on the dog go round and round."

She was probably around eight.

At the top of the short pine tree by the fence, she once discovered a bird laying eggs in a nest. She reported daily on the progress:

"There's an egg in the nest!"
"There's two eggs in the nest!"
"Three!"
"One of them hatched!"
"He's so cute!"
"He's so soft!"
"He has a tiny little beak!"

I hauled my largeness up that tree to see the sweet birdie, but what I actually saw was a bulbous-eyed, scraggly-ass, sparsely-feathered monster screaming for help. Allie has very loving eyes.

She is artistic and creative and funny. She's so quiet in public that no one guesses how funny she is.

Allie is kind to everyone, and is understanding and tender-hearted. She's a lamb of a girl.

She takes imaginative pictures - and draws - and sings - and plays piano - and writes. This summer, while I was at work and Ben was staffing at camp, Allie wrote a novella without telling me. When she finally let me read it, it was so good I almost cried. She acts in plays, but she would rather sing in them. She's more feminine than her mother, but also less so in some ways. She's a perfectionist, and her father knows he can rely on her to help him on his projects in the proper manner. I always tell him, "She's you - only cubed".

She loves her brothers (except for Ben), and they largely made her who she is today.

And we like it.