Cora at six-years-old says “got it” approximately 100 times a day. She poses it as a question when she’s talking to me, “I’d like a strawberry pug for breakfast, got it?” and also as a response to my homework query or Monday chore request or be-nice-to-your-sibling demand, “Got it!” I don’t know where she heard that phrase or why it’s clung to her like a baby koala these past few months, but when I look at her adorable freckled face and wide toothless grin I can’t stop thinking about words and passing time and the things we say and love.
Isn’t it funny how people pick up on phrases until they become more than letters strung together on a page and instead a part of their very personality? I am guilty of facetiously saying, “you’re not wrong” so often that my closest cringe with knowing, but sometimes the things people repeatedly say bring with them comfort and kinship and a warm sense of belonging. It’s my dad’s “kick butt and take names” and my mom’s “melk.” It’s Ash’s “I can’t even” and Mad saying she’s “tickled.” It’s Meghan’s giggle as she responds “I knooooow” with a drawn-out vowel, sometimes with a period, other times followed by a question mark. It’s the warm blanket of new phrases we try out being noticed, the old ones recognized.
Cora’s favorite color is orange now, instead of the purple it has been for as long as I can remember. She favors pants over dresses, and jeans least of all, though she still wears them because I can’t stand how adorable she looks with a ripped knee and button fly. Where once upon a time she only tolerated school, she is now desperate to read everything, to do all of the math problems plus extra credit, to write endless stories of wonder in her rainbow unicorn journal with such tidy penmanship. Kids change so fast, the passing month, every season, and I know there will come a day, probably sooner rather than later, that “got it” doesn’t escape from her lips, just like she blinked and preferred American Girl dolls over Barbies, orange over purple. And I’ll miss my “got it” girl, her mispronounced r’s and perfume pleas and the way her long lanky body still feels at home being carried in my arms. My baby girl at six is magical. Got it?!
