When they called your daughter "madame 10,000 volts" at age 2, and she grows up, she becomes--what?

[DFW]

Madame "I can power a city while napping?" Don't ask, because she might answer in the affirmative.

When we raised our two girls, we tried to make them understand that gender was no barrier, and that they could accomplish anything they wanted. I think the message got through. The elder one had already decided, after visiting New York City as a teenager multiple times, "this is home." And so it is. She is living in Manhattan, married, working full time, raising two sons (tri-lingually, outdoing us by one), doesn't have a free second, and has no use for one.

I met my younger daughter, Madame 10,000 Volts, now age 38, for an abbreviated lunch in Frankfurt/Main today. I had work until 11:45, and she had a lunch meeting nearby at 12:30. So we had a power father-and-daughter meet-up for about 35 minutes. We ordered our teas (black with lemon for me, orange-ginger for her), and exchanged the proper, "so, whatcha been up to, whatcha got on your schedule?"

With me, it was the usual France-Belgium-Holland-Germany-Switzerland-Spain with a rare day or two in England at the end of the month. Apparently, compared to my atomic-powered daughter, that must have sounded like I was planning to spend the next month on a couch watching TV.

With her? You mean, aside from her usual work-related day jaunts down to Vienna, München and Zürich, as well as up to Hamburg and London? Oh, she's going to Tel Aviv for some conference for a long weekend, down to Zanzibar (!!!) to meet up with an old classmate, over to New York to see her sister and then on to Dallas to see my housemates before flying back to Frankfurt from there. Oh, yeah, and then at some point back over to Hawai'i to check in on her step-son to see how he's doing at her old school on the Big Island, from which she graduated 20 years ago.

I think that if Mars were already colonized, she'd have booked a long weekend there, as well.

I think I must have an electric eel's genes somewhere in my ancestry, because it sure seems like she got them.

[Fla Dem]

1. She obviously learned from and takes after her Dad. Glad you got a chance to touch base.

[DFW]

2. I am small potatoes compared to her

People used to drop their jaws at me when I said I'd go down to Spain for the day for work (1 hour 50 minute flight to Barcelona from here). She's going to Zanzibar for a long weekend just to see a former classmate. That blows me right out of the water. Zanzibar? That's James Bond, Jason Bourne and Indiana Jones combined, and they are fictional!

But, yeah, she's never boring, and when you take off the fancy skirt and put the jeans back on, she's again just a young mom trying to get her daughters not to destroy the place, just like any other.

[highplainsdem]

3. The super-powered battery doesn't fall far from the generator. Or something like that.

LOL.

It's hard to do an acorn/oak analogy taking 10,000 volts into consideration, but I tried.

Kudos to both of you.

And I'm glad you found any time to get together...

[DFW]

4. Or something like that LOL!!

She has always been that nuclear-powered acorn. Later on, she has learned how to act like someone who is perfectly normal when the situation warrants. However, her partner, who is a senior partner at the same law firm, says that whenever she is called upon to give a presentation, she owns the room (German or English, she is bi-lingual). All these 60-something hotshots get the idea very quickly that this 38 year old looks-like-a-college-kid is the sharpest knife in the room. As her parents, we figured that out by the time she was four.