“Hey Mom come here, I need help with the green eyeshadow,” Sophie called from the bathroom.

“Um, okay,” I said, taking in the situation, the big, blurry smears. “You want me to get it off your cheeks?”

“No! I want you to put it on my eyebrows and all over my eyes,” she said, pointing to the Claire’s multi-pack. “Use the darkest green.”

I picked up the applicator and covered it in green eyeshadow, carefully painting her eyebrows and then her lids.

“How does that look?” I asked, pointing her toward the mirror.

“Good!” she said, exhaling loudly. “Now I won’t get pinched.”

It’s a challenge, figuring out how to dress for St. Patrick’s Day when your school dress code is limited to blue, white, yellow and purple. The eyeshadow accompanied rainbow striped socks, green beads and several green shamrock stickers. I’m sure none of it’s acceptable. And rule breaking aside, I’m not sure if I’m the best or the worst mom for letting my kid out of the house looking like such a wreck — sure to be the source of whispers and pointing, if not pinches, today.

But today, I didn’t care. Maybe it’s because we just returned from New Orleans, where you’re practically required to dress like a freak. Maybe it’s because I remember getting pinched on St. Patrick’s Day. Maybe I’m just tired, and sick of that stupid dress code.

Or maybe it’s because more and more, Sophie is my guide – I’m realizing that her choices aren’t always such bad ones.

Really, who cares if she goes to school with green eye shadow smeared on her cheeks like war paint? It’s all too appropriate, if you ask me. Sophie’s fighting all kinds of battles all day long, battles I don’t see, battles I probably don’t want to know about. Some days she doesn’t want to go to school at all. Today she was kind of excited to show off her outfit.

In the crush to get out the door this morning, I almost forgot to fill out a field trip permission slip that had been floating around in Sophie’s backpack for a while. I smoothed it out and grabbed a pen — signing, adding phone numbers, checking no to “Food, Plant, Insect Sting Allergies,” scribbling “Down syndrome” when the health form asked for “Chronic Health Problems,”and pausing only when it asked for “Recommended Treatment.”

“Green eyeshadow,” I thought. Instead I left that part blank, shoved the slip back into her backpack, and hustled Sophie out the door to school.

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