Athena's ambition

Athena in her new outfit

Athena has always had a mind of her own, and a will to get what she wants done. I've always known this about her, from the moment I was surprised by her conception. Once I had abandoned the questions of "how could this happen?" and "what are we going to do?", I immediately got the impression of a little girl who just couldn't wait to join her big brother, and one day I'm going to look into the back story of how she managed to cut in line. She was born with ambition, and I am at turns amazed and delighted by it, since I seem to have very little ambition myself.

Last week she had a performance for her Enrichment Group. Enrichment is a class 5th graders get to choose to go to once a week--they get to choose from health, knitting, art, singing, etc. Her Enrichment Group was Singing, and under the direction of the school music teacher, these 8 girls put on a "Glee"-like show where they each got to sing a contemporary song as a solo and they had one group song at the end with choreography and everything. She was understandably nervous about singing a solo in front of the entire school, and thought that a new outfit was just the thing to boost her confidence. I would have agreed...if I hadn't already spent quite a lot on her already this year on new clothes--surely, one of her newer outfits would suffice. But she spent the next week asking for jobs to do around the house and negotiating how much money they were worth--(cleaning the linen closet--me thinking I was generous: $3, her: "I was thinking more like, $5?"), When she had $8, she found a dress at Target for $14, and convinced me to pay the other $6. She worked so hard for it, I felt like I had to give in.

Singing "A Thousand Miles" by Vanessa Carlton

Second case in point: She found out that the Talent Show at school was canceled this year. She and her friend Alyssa and her other friend Alyssa have been working since February choreographing and practicing a dance, so they were very disappointed. A lot of her classmates were, too. So she thought, "Well, hey, I'm one of the class presidents, I'll go talk to Mrs. Kennedy (the principal)". So she went down, and very calmly inquired why the talent show was canceled. When she found out it was because the teachers who normally sponsored the talent show were too busy this year (one was on maternity leave, the other is getting married next month) she suggested that she would find two other teachers to sponsor it. And then she went around asking teachers til she found 2 that said yes. (But really, who's going to say no to a kid?). So now the talent show is back on.

Of course, I'm proud of her. I'm just also a little worried about what I'm going to do when she decides she wants her own car, or to go backpacking across Europe...