My nine-year-old daughter, Miss Tadpole, is slow.

Miss Tadpole

It's not what you're thinking.  She's not disabled. She's perfectly bright. She can read, she can sing, she can play the violin.

What she can't do is hurry. Ever.

She is a champion, world-class dawdler.

As a not-quite-toddler, she would sit for hours and draw doodles on paper with crayons. She could draw as soon as she could hold anything that could make marks, but didn't walk until 22 months. Knowing her now, she just didn't want to.

Sports? Not her thing. Miserably, terribly, absolutely not her thing. Sports mean that you have to come out of a daze, and actually watch. Pay attention to where the ball is. Move your body in space when someone else tells you to. Dance isn't her thing either. Dreamy dance of her own invention? Fantastic. Dance class with other kids and a teacher? Not so much.

Everything, everything goes slow with her. Putting on her shoes. Finishing her lunch. Doing her homework. Getting out of the car to get to swimming lessons. Even on Halloween, surrounded with a crowd of friends, I'm always at the back of the pack with her while her friends hurry three houses down the street.

Me? I'm always in a hurry. We have a schedule. I have deadlines. We have fifteen minutes to get out the door. Where are you, dammit! I should get a bad-mom badge of shame for every time I have lost my cool while she drifts off into space tying her shoes when the rest of the family is in the car and waiting.

But she doesn't seem to mind. She's an unruffled, unhurried sort of person. She can entertain herself for hours in her room, building worlds in her imagination. I find relics of her daydreams tucked into corners behind the clothes she never put away--a letter to the president, a dinosaur wearing platform sandals, a stuffed dog in a tutu and a tiara, fifteen folded paper cranes, a picture of a centaur done in magic marker, and the remnants of what must have been a marionette show conducted from the top bunk of her bed.

Her sketch books are wonderful--endless fantastical creatures with wings, dragons, fairies, princesses, alligators, horses--odds and bits of whatever stories she's reading lately or whatever movie she saw last.

Like most other fourth graders, she listens to Hannah Montana, wears sparkly nail polish, and wants a pair of fuzzy boots. But the trappings of this world don't seem to have taken root--the worlds in her mind have more weight. She spends more time drawing than listening to Hannah, and she knows more about Lucy from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe than she does about the latest creation from the Disney Channel.

When I'm willing to face it, what irritates me so much about her is that she is just like me so many years ago. I remember being dreamy like that, even after I figured out that it made me different. I remember trying to do my hair in a Farrah to be like all the other girls, when what I really wanted was to be Lucy and escape to Narnia. I  remember struggling to fit in, trying so hard not to be such an awkward bookish geek, trying to convince myself I wanted to be a happy perky cheerleader when what I really wanted was wings. I ache for her, knowing that her waking is coming soon, hoping to spare her the pain of middle school when no one will let her be Lucy any more.

When I can slow myself down to her pace, when I can put aside all the things that I ought to be doing, her world is a peaceful one. She doesn't just smell the flowers, she examines each one and creates an imaginary universe in among the pistils and stamens. She goes deep. She can spend an hour finding rocks in the back yard, or drawing a mural with sidewalk chalk. She can drift into space in between the table and the sink, forget the stack of plates she's carrying, and find herself back at the art table drawing pictures without knowing how she got there.

I wish I could live in her world again. Sometimes I can almost touch it. If I work at it, if I'm disciplined and find a slot of time where imagination can live, I can coax it back into life. But not now. I've got to do my taxes, pay the bills, cook dinner, and get everyone to bed by 8:30.

I hope she enjoys it while it lasts. I hope, some day in the future, she can do a better job than I have at giving her imaginary world a place to live.