Orbiting the Same Sun, From Different Worlds

She was a cute-as-a-button little girl who looked like she could have just stepped out of a Pottery Barn Kids catalog.  Walking and talking, but still enough baby left to have the hints of dimples on her hands and chubby legs.  Seriously, so cute.  "She's your little doll!" I observed to her mom, and she didn't deny it.  "Pretty much.  Making her clothes is my creative outlet."  Wow, then.  That mama has a lot of creativity to let out.  The dress was a piece of art.

And then there was the hat.

This picture may not do it justice, but basically it was a sweet little bonnet that reminded me of Little House on the Prairie.

"Did you make the hat, too?" I ask innocently.

"Oh, no.  That hat was seventy dollars."

I make a concerted effort to keep a straight face.  "Did you just say seven-zero?" I ask, trying to keep the question casual and light.

"Well, yes.  It started out at fifty, but then I had to get the monogram and shipping was 10, so by the time it was done, yes.  But I just had to get it."

Naturally, yes.  I can see that.  

Her cherub's bottom grazes the sand as she squats down for a brief moment.  A minute later, she's distracted by something --though I'm not sure what because she has the most perfectly proportioned pink sunglasses I've ever seen on a child that small (and yes, all that alliteration is intentional because she was a girl who looked like she might have two middle names)

"Well now, that's the dirtiest she's ever gotten!" her mom told me.  "Now that whole outfit will have to be washed."

And we've hit that conversational impasse where I'm at a complete loss for words.

Because two things are flashing through my mind with sirens.  Now that outfit will have to be washed?!  This suggests that her child can actually wear something for more than seven minutes without it requiring a wash and stain-treatment if it is worn for eight.  Second: Your daughter dusts her bright white ruffled diaper cover with a little sand--a charming bit of cinnamon and sugar on an upside down muffin--and it is the dirtiest she has ever gotten?!

And as long as we're using semi-clunky food metaphors to describe kiddos, let me tell you what my own sweetness of a boy was looking like:  He was also playing in the sand.  And the water.  And I'm pretty sure he was thinking of chicken nuggets because he would get as wet as possible and coat his entire body with sand. His Entire. Body. Then, with glee and giggles he would find the muddiest part of the play area and stomp around in it because what else would a human chicken nugget do but find the dipping sauce?  

After the sand escapades he had used my water bottle to pour water over his head and laugh and laugh.  Maybe he was moving on to marinades-I'm not sure.  

By the time my kiddo was in proximity of this little beauty he was a gritty mess.  I was a gritty mess from having carried him.  We could have been extras in a film about homeless orphans and not stood out too much.

The gap between my world and hers stretches a little more in the silence and I don't know what to say to bridge it.

So I close the fashion magazine of her life and she turns the news channel off of mine and we say our polite goodbyes and move along.

She had a princess to attend to and I had sand to get out of my bra.