"I'm not a cheetah, Mom!"

When my daughter was growing up, I often had her run into shops while I stayed in the car. Back in the days of renting videos, for example, when we were just returning videos, I'd have her get out of the car to drop off the videos, save me the trouble of finding a parking spot.

Or if we were picking up a pizza, I'd pull up, she'd run in and get the pizza.

Once, when she was fairly young, maybe seven or eight, I said something about speed. Maybe I said "Hurry up", worried about where I had the car stopped or something.

She said "I'm not a cheetah, Mom!" and then she ran into whatever shop she was headed.

When she got back in the car, I asked her why she had said cheetah. "Cheetahs", she proudly told me, are the fastest animal on earth. No animal runs faster than a cheetah."

There was actually a pizza chain where she grew up called Cheetah Pizza. I had not understood the name until Rosie told me that cheetahs run faster than any other mammal.

According to Wikipedia, Rosie got it right. The cheetah is the fastest land animal.

Sometimes she groused about having to run out of the car as I have described. I would calmly point out that we could stop renting videos, stop ordering pick up food, etc.

Eventually, as she got into the middle school years, she just flat out refused to do it.

There were signs all along of her emotional disconnect from me. She regularly did not give me a birthday present, for example. She rarely acknowledged Mother's Day. 

My sister used to tell me I was wrong to not force her to do some things for me, to contribute to our shared wellbeing, but I knew Rosie was seriously OCD.  I knew that she had an issue of being compulsively defiant, although I did not use that language back then in reference to Rosie's often puzzling, stubborn refusal to simply show me ordinary sharing-a-house-a-life kindness.  She wouldn't do chores around the house. Well, she did all the laundry because she didn't want me to touch her clothing.

When I first remembered, just now, "I am not a cheeteah" I was awash in warm feelings, warm memories. I reflected too long. Now I am crying, remembering my neverending loss.