Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon

I woke up rather early this morning. Reason why? Had to send Nabilla to a photo shoot at In Trend Magazine, Seri Kembangan. I HAD to send her there as, if you are familiar with Seri Kembangan and it's vicinity, the place is a PWD (Jabatan Kerja Raya) version of Mad Hatter. One wrong turn and you will be driving all the way back to KL. Or do you prefer Seremban?

I have always bragged that my days are not time-sensitive. But after 3 successive days of pinching forty-winks at odd hours, Murphy’s Law warmly wished me ‘Happy Morning’. It took me a good 15 minutes to look for my wallet, scouring for some bills and two wrong turns (God Bless  those people who put  up 'shady' road signs!) and there  we were. On time.

Along the way, glancing at Nabilla, half-believing: ‘My oh my, this girl is going to a photo shoot!’.

Wasn’t this the baby, who, not so long ago could not speak a word until she was three year’s old? And when she did talk, she was our official story-teller. No stone unturned - secrets simply not safe with her. The toddler who had trouble in maintaining body equilibrium? She went tumbling all over the back seat every time I did those ala-Hakkinen drifts. The girl who begged me to relief her of her duties as a School Prefect  just because, all of a sudden, she was in the spotlight? I can still remember Nabilla took one whole year to interact with her college mates. Well, she was brought up lovingly by two families, mine and my sister-in-law’s. Thus, the idea to co-exist with other people was really ‘Not In’ then.

And Presto! Here is one young lady, sensible, sensitive, multiple Dean’s List scholar, screenwriter-to-be and has huge penchant for 80s music (she loves 'Radiohead' and heard Alan Parsons Project's 'Eye In Sky' blaring through her minute laptop speaker yesterday). However, she won’t scrape through doing those balancing acts still. I suspect.

We celebrated her 21^st birthday last week.

Welcome to the adult world, Nabil. I will guide and protect you, no worries (but curfew will be, as usual, at 11).You will always be a baby to me - no matter how old you are!