The Sweetest 16 (for Whurl-a-Gurl)

The Sweetest 16 (for Whurl-a-Gurl) by Mark Anthony Neal | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
“With the other children one could hear, some distance off, their feet flopping in the two-inch dust. Karintha’s running was a whir.” – Jean Toomer, “Karintha”
You can’t ever ask me about these things, because I will tell you—from what I remember—that she pulled my glasses off of my face the first time we met (yeah, she was only about a week old).  And I will swear that we’ve been talking together—her using words—since she was about 2-months-old; she riding shot-gun in the backseat in her car-seat, singing Jilly’s “The Way” (“grits…”). 
I now ride shotgun (more often than not); yesterday morning the both of us head-nodding to Hov’s “Izzo,” it sounding as fresh as it did in the old Honda Accord that she spent so much time in those in early days.
What I know is that she’s always had a plan.  Somehow knowing that if she could just get into the world a little bit sooner—by three weeks—the right family would be waiting for her. 
I mean, she knew this; borne out perhaps in how little we’ve ever talked about her adoption (as opposed to her baby sister who asks about such things weekly). She matter of factly confessed a short time ago—as we both survived another Q & A from Baby Sis—that she just never thinks about such things, because “it” has given her the best life she could have imagined.
I will confess that I think such things more often than she, that baby-sister or the mate of 23-years will ever know. 

Every time I get a good night’s sleep, wake-up pre-dawn for a morning walk or pull into the driveway after a long day on Duke’s yard, I’m reminded of the once little girl, who once willed me—even challenged me—to better health and better living, if only because I wasn’t always sure I would be around long enough to witness a Sweet 16.