A few nights ago I fumbled around the kitchen after a workout, simultaneously trying to stop sweating, unload the dishwasher and put on vegetables to steam. I looked over at my daughter drawing cheerfully at the kitchen table. She looked up at me.

"Can I help you, Mommy?" she asked.

She does chores around the house, but rarely without being asked. This question came sincerely, without prompting.

"Yes, that would be lovely," I said.

She wiped down the table. She set the table. She opened a can of peas for herself, poured them into her bowl and some Tupperware, rinsed out the can and put it in the recycling. She poured the milk. She added cheese to the turkey burgers sizzling on the George Foreman grill without burning herself. She carried her little stool around the kitchen with a firm sense of purpose. Every time she finished a task, she looked at me expectantly. "What else can I do, Mommy?" In between tasks, she sat on her little stool, hands folded demurely in her lap.

I wasn't sure I knew this kid, but I liked her. A lot.

When Beloved walked through the door, the spell was broken. She ran to tell him about her day, and it was time to eat anyway. We sat down and watched her fall off her chair twice, back to normal. I told Beloved about that magical half hour when she morphed from a raucous and sometimes sassy five-year-old to a practical and concerned only daughter.

As I went in that night to kiss her sleeping head, I thought how she's changed lately. How she's gone from being solely someone I care for to being someone who occasionally cares for me, fetching me a soda from the fridge or holding a paper steady while I sign with one hand. Suddenly she's this kid who can go get the mail and set the table and get herself dressed in the morning.

When did that happen?