Lashes by a little Madam…
My daughter is a strong personality. She is sweet and loving and sunny and shares her dimples 99% of the time. The other 1% is a lesson in parental endurance. She is absolutely determined and focussed on What She Wants to within an inch of her life (and mine). It sometimes astounds me that she is just three years old. She seems often to be an old soul in a little angel’s get-up.
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She comes from a family of strong women, so I guess I cannot blame her. Some people might even call me a strong woman. And that would be true to a degree, but I can also be pretty damned vulnerable and needy. I don’t like it, but it’s true. Most of the women I grew up with were terrifically strong – both grandmother’s outlived their men and needed all their wiles and backbone and sass. Lots and lots of sass.
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And our Little Woman has sass. By the bucketload. God help us.
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My Mum is strong too. She doesn’t think so, but her strength comes off in a quiet, gentle, vertically-challenged, steely blue-eyed kinda way. You don’t mess with my Mum when the proverbial hits the rotors. But don’t tell I said that. It’d wreck her street cred.
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I also managed to marry into a family populated by strong women. SSB’s mother passed away soon after we met, but her legacy of gentle strength and generosity (and fabulous cooking) lives on through her daughter and sons. SSB’s Dad remarried a marvellous woman to whom my children look as a grandmother. She (we’ll call her Grandma G) is loving and happy, and very, very strong. And man, Grandma G can crack a whip. Literally. Sounds like a gunshot going off when she snaps that plaited leather over her head. There is something about a woman wielding a leather lash that gets a everyone’s attention like nothing else.
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We own many whips here at Granite Glen, but they are rarely used. Our cattle don’t require the use of them (Grandma G used them regularly on truculent bulls when she ran her own cattle property) so ours get to gather dust until the dogs start barking at night. Then SSB or Dad will grab the coiled leash and let it rip. One or two cracks generally does the trick.
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City visitors always enjoy a bit of a whip-cracking demo during their stay. We all have a go with varying results and minor injuries to uneducated whip-weilders. Nothing worse than a self-inflicted cracker mark across your own cheek with an audience looking on. Not that I would know…
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The other morning I came across a sight that gave me a momentary flash into my future. There was TLW, in her dressing gown, standing barefoot at the back steps. With whip in hand.
Dear Lord…
She is tiny… and that whip is pretty long.
But she is undeterred and determined…
A picture of pink fairies and tangled-haired concentration…
It wasn’t a Grandma G crack just yet, but there was definitely a bit of a snap.
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Suddenly I feel a little sorry for whatever boyfriend first annoys her… let’s hope he doesn’t mind a little leather round his ears!
9 Comments
debby
Well, if he can’t handle a bit of leather around his ears, then he’s certainly not made of the right stuff, is he? Way to weed out the no-accounts…
jeanie
ha ha – I am also very concerned about the first woman that breaks her big brother’s heart, because I am SURE she will protect him just as precisely!
Jayne
LOL
That is a picture that should be posted up on bulletin boards all over the world with the caption –
“When she rules the world, we will remember our manners!”
Pencil Writer
TLW is darling–and dedicated, obviously! As to the “old soul in a little angel’s get-up”–I do believe that she–and all of us– lived a long time as spirits prior to our advent in this life. So we’re all kind of “old souls” (not like Hindu’s reincarnation type of thing, however.)
Also your precious Little Woman has obviously been studying technique of those around her! Don’t make her mad! Right?
When you mentioned women in your families–strong, but soft, too–I couldn’t help but think of “Steel Magnolias” which was filmed just down the road from us.
dykewife
i LIKE your little girl! 🙂 i think that’s a skill that every girl should have.
debby
Or every mother of a girl….
Bush Babe (of Granite Glen)
Ah yes Deb (your comment makes sense once I read it with the others!)…
I may not be much of a cracker, but I am hoping that my years of observation of castration techniques (!) should help me bluff my way through any threats I might make in that dept. But I think she could be taking care of herself…
I just love that she hung in there til she got a result…
🙂
BB
Pencil Writer
Indiana Jones, look out!
debby
Castration. Yeah. The threat of that would probably be even more effective than standing there looking like “Oz-woman Indy”.