Dawn Is Me

Okay, it’s official. August 2005 has overtaken February 2005 as the longest, suckiest month of the year.

Hope it doesn’t get any worse than this, but I am not sanguine.

Here’s the high point of my life right now: Gina has decided that she is going to look for work.

This is a major milestone, I want you should know. For the past several years, she has been telling me and Gino about all kinds of expensive things she wants: cell phone service, a new mountain bike, a car … you know, the usual. And, of course, that doesn’t even get into the wardrobe she’d like to have.

We always told her the same thing: get a job.

She always replied the same way: I don’t have time. Which translates into, I want to (a) play soccer, (b) hang out with my friends and (c) have the amount of leisure time that makes my teen heart glad.

So, we would always tell her: well, if you want what you want, then you have to give something up in order to get it. If you’re not willing to make that sacrifice, then I guess you didn’t want it bad enough.

Now this ProScout thing has happened and she has one of those very rare opportunities to realized what probably seemed to her to be an impossible dream. So, when it comes to this, she really wants it bad.

What’s cool about it is that, when we talked about it, I frankly told her that we just don’t have the money. But the words, “Get a job” never left my lips. A couple of days later, she was telling me that she was going to get her working papers and start looking for work to see if she could get the money together. Gino didn’t believe her, but she had that done in 24 hours or so and a day later had an application in with the locak K-Mart.

That was the last big sort of Mom-ish worry I had about Gina, that she was going to go through life trying to get people to give her stuff instead of being willing to work for stuff. So, from where I sit, this is major maturity setting in.

If Gina gets her chance at the brass modeling/acting ring through ProScout, I wish her every success. But it’s what she’s has shown me she is willing to do to get herself there — instead of trying to find somebody to do it for her or hanging her hopes on timely miracles — that is making me as proud of her as I’ve been only a few times in her life.

You go, girl! I promise you I’m gonna try that much harder to help you get there, now that I see you’re willing to do some of the work yourself.