Not the needy kind.

This one’s for the girls without boys.

The girls who had boys

once upon a time

{but unlike the fairytales promised,

they disappeared}.

The girls with dead dads

or dads who might as well be dead

or dads who are away risking death

to keep us alive.

The girls who come from a family of girls

{maybe even four girls, one after the other}

where the letter Y just doesn’t exist.

The girls with grandaddies too old to help

and uncles too far away to help

and boys who are just friends and are no help at all.

We learned how to

check our own oil

pump up a tire

clean battery cables,

and we’ve scouted out the best mechanics

for noises that mean something more serious is going on

under that hood.

When that tree fell in the yard last sumer,

we picked up sticks

dragged limbs

sawed off branches

chopped up the trunk

piece by piece until there was nothing left but

a stump to burn out and a pile of firewood.

And you can bet, when the months get cold,

we can get that fire started

and we didn’t need Boy Scouts to teach us how.

Two Men And A Truck have nothing on us.

We can lift king-sized mattresses

and figure out how to angle an oversized armchair

through a dorm room door.

We can load a Ranger bed down

and fill an Explorer up

and we will drive three hours back and forth,

however many times it takes,

until we get the job done.

Spiders do scare us,

but we’re braver than we look,

so we will capture them in tea glasses

slip an index card underneath

and release them into the grass outside.

And walking up on a snake does makes us scream,

but we will grab the shovel and hold our breath

while transporting the snake to a new home

on the other side of the yard.

We can do it all.

Almost.

And for the things we can’t finish on our own

{I say finish because you can damn well bet we’re gonna try}

we’ve batted our eyelashes enough times

to create a long list of back up boys

that we borrow on occasion.

We don’t mind accepting help

as long as you’re not implying that we’re helpless.

We paint our own walls

and mow our own yards

and change out our own lightbulbs.

And we’ve done it all by ourselves for so long

that we’re used to it by now.

We can still comfort a crying baby

and we still like bubble baths

and we will still drive you wild

in our tightest jeans and lowest cut shirts.

But we don’t need you.

Don’t be offended

when we push you away

if you get too close,

too protective.

We are not the needy kind.

We’ve earned our callouses.

We’ve earned our walls.

We’ve earned our independence.