Changing Roles....For My Daughter's 20th Birthday

I don't know if The Beautiful Redhead had any idea what she was starting when she offered to babysit for her friend's newborn daughter, I don't think any of us did, then.

I basically took her on initially as a project.  I thought I could be a good mentor to her, it would not cost me a dime, and it was a way for me to be able to give something back.  Since then I have grown to love her like a daughter and also as a dear friend, not to mention that I got a pretend grand child out of the deal.  I would not have missed this for the world.

This odd relationship has enriched all of our lives and I do not believe any of us would change a thing about it, all things considered.  In it I have been able to glimpse what my relationship with my own dear daughter will eventually be able to be, even though at the time this all started she was still in the phase of a teenager who mostly rolled her eyes at her mother.  It got me through some rough spots, I freely admit.  In addition, it has given my daughter a person who is just like an older sister, someone she can go to for advice and a guardian angel to watch out for her when I cannot.

My relationship with my bonus daughter was free from the constraints of my own children who were still in the years of believing their mother needed to be protected from the truth.  Truth be told, all most parent/child relationships need is absolute brutal honesty, which is asking a lot on both sides.

Sometimes I play the role of mother, sometimes friend with my bonus daughter.  Since we are both mothers, we usually come down on the same side of things, and this is a great comfort to me.

The other day my dear Abigail came to visit me.  We made blueberry pancakes wearing our aprons, then we went and fed some carrots to some horses.  Nothing big, but time together spent doing whatever we wanted.  She does not seem to know that The Beautiful Redhead is my daughter, and when I say she is, the pretend Grand Baby steadfastly insists "I am your child......" and I do not correct her.  She is most certainly the child of my heart, and too young to understand that love is the eternal spring that never runs dry.  There is more than enough to go around for all.  I let her have this truth, and am glad to do so.  The Beautiful Redhead, on the other hand, I think sometimes feels a little jealous.  I am ashamed to admit that this warms my heart because it proves to me that she still loves me.  She has just turned 20 and we are almost at the point where we can be equals in the emotional world of our hearts.  At last!  I rejoice for this, have worked and waited for this.

I recently picked up the phone for a conversation with my bonus daughter.  She was making dinner for my daughter, who makes Abigail mind, and Abigail says she is mean.  My bonus daughter has come to depend on my daughter to sometimes be the disciplinarian when she can't get Abigail to mind.  Just like real sisters!

At the beginning of the conversation we were talking as friends.  She was asking me what The Beautiful Redhead would eat, so I took on the role of mother.  At some point my daughter arrives and in the background I can hear her and Abigail having an animated conversation.  We keep talking.  In the background I can hear an escalation of noise.  All of a sudden my bonus daughter's voice becomes stressed and she says "I have to go now, The Beautiful Redhead and Abigail are fighting." And just like that, we were both mothers again.  I got off the phone laughing, grateful for the fact that while our roles all keep changing, they are also staying the same, and in the end the mothers are always in charge.

My Beautiful Redhead, Mackenzie Grace, this is to show you in case you ever feel alone, that you never are.  You will always have a friend, and a mother, and we will always love you no matter what you do.  When you are proud of yourself, when you are ashamed of yourself, when you don't know where to turn, come home to us.  We will never think less of you. We will defend you like dragons when you need it.  We have done it all before, and we will carry you and uphold you even when you cannot do that for yourself. 

I am so very proud of the person you have and continue to become.  You shine with bravery, grace and love.  You are smart, you know your own mind and you do not have a problem with speaking it.  I doubt that you realize how far ahead of the game you are.  You make up your mind and do not stray from your values.   You are true to yourself.  You have a beauty that will never fade because it originates in your soul.  The rest is just window dressing, and quite beautiful window dressing at that.  I don't know if you realize how beautiful you are, from the inside out.

For the days when you don't, here is proof.  I am so very blessed to have been lucky enough to be your mother.  My love for you has grown with you over the years.  The day you were born I thought I could never love you more, but I was so very wrong.  This love will keep growing, and every person you touch along the way will only multiply that love by however many people are lucky enough to know you.

I would not have missed these past 20 years for all the money or sleep in the world.  Never forget that.  I love you sweetie.  Here's to the next 120 years.  I will still be loving you then.

  

After she's gone

The other day I was catching up with my cyber friend Katie, at Marriage Confessions, who is a redhead, who is expecting her daughter, Gracie, to be born soon, and they were showing the baby's room. Here is a link to the blog, I highly recommend it.
http://marriageconfessions.com/2011/02/16/bellycast-6/
This little girl has a beautiful room, freshly done and waiting for her, featuring one of the MOST gorgeous mobiles I have ever seen.  It's made of butterflies. 
I have followed this couple for a couple of years.  They got me with the first baby, "Bean", but I stayed for her honesty.  They are very brave, this couple, and very grounded.  She is clearly big and pregnant in the video, worn out, tired of even talking, and he is steadfastly videoing little details that he knows she wants you to see.  This is a good picture of them as a couple.  She does most of the talking on the blog, he takes care of the details, steadfastly and faithfully.  So sweet, and then, it happened.
She pointed to a shelf full of dolls in Gracie's nursery.  My heart stopped and I got tears in my eyes.  Her sweet young voice explained how these were dolls that had been hers growing up, and sat on a shelf in her room when she was a little girl.  I was bawling out loud by then.

You see, I have a redheaded daughter.  Having a red headed child gives you a bond with anyone who has ever had red hair in their family.  It is always the first thing remarked upon.  By the time my daughter was 3 she would lean away from hands raised to touch her hair because everyone always did, first thing.  "Don't let them touch my hair", she would discreetly request as they headed toward us, hands already outstretched.  Not only do I have a red headed daughter, but Grace is her middle name.  Is the bawling starting to make sense?  Well, in her room, since before she was born, there has been a shelf.  My mother started buying dolls for my daughter when she was born.  Only redheaded dolls.  Not expensive ones, not collector's items, just redheaded dolls, many of which have been displayed since her birth on that same shelf, where they are still sitting in her now basically abandoned room.

More than one shelf.  Note to Katie, bookshelves lining the top of her room are really handy.

I went to her room.  The dolls sit silently collecting dust and perhaps dreaming of days past us all now, like me.  Do they look forward to another little girl, like me?

I laid down on my daughter's bed, on top of the quilt my mother made, feeling my connection to the two women who are closest to me in this life.  Who always will be closest to me, in life or beyond.  Life flows through us, as women and all we are is the conduit, the vessel, the link between.  At times I find this a relief, other times it feels like the weight of the world.  Always, it is a fact.  Known.  Unquestioned.
I looked at the Sunflower Sue quilt made by my grandmother, lovingly and prominently displayed on the wall.  My Nana, mother to 2 boys and expecting her third to be her girl, made this quilt for what turned out to be my Uncle Melvin, who would be a big brother to her baby, my father.  Four boys.  So she threw the quilt up in the closet and drug it out when she really needed it, bound it in some blue she found lying around, and when I graduated from high school, I got the quilt.  (Score!!)  She laughed so hard telling me the story of her hopes for a daughter and the last-minute blue binding that she almost peed her pants.  This quilt is one my most precious possessions.  She had to wait for granddaughters, but she didn't mind.

 I thought of Katie, at one end of a tunnel, expecting to meet her daughter any day, dreaming of what it will be like to have a daughter.  I thought of me, at the other end of that same tunnel, reflecting on the reality of all those dreams I had harbored also, before I knew who my daughter really was, when she was just an idea in my head.  A hardly dared, hoped-for wish that I made every day, never out loud.

I thought of what it means to be a link in the chain.  The only thing that connects all that you are with all that you will be.  You are no more important than any other link, yet at times you are the most important because you alone carry the knowledge of who you are, where you came from, and how you got here today.  You have to be sure to make every effort to never leave your children alone spiritually.  You may not be able to keep them from being alone physically but who among us is ever really alone spiritually when God is always, always with us? 
You have to give them.......everything.  You have to make them strong enough to stand alone if necessary and stay true to themselves.  You have to somehow try to teach them to trust themselves, because they are worthy.  To love themselves.  To take pride in who they are.  They are everything up to this moment of NOW, which will only last a very little while.  When they are two you wonder if you can stand it and when it will ever end.  Then in a very short (too short) time you are wondering where the years went and if you should throw away old prom decorations which look like trash to you, but.......it might have meaning for her. 
I wondered when my daughter will finally take her room apart, what she will keep and how carefully she will pack it.  What do all these things mean to her?  Does she even know yet?  Has she ever taken the time to think about it or will that happen some day still in the future?  Will I be there?  I thought about writing down all that I know in case I'm not.  She comes from a long line of strong, smart, headstrong women.  This is her birthright and I have no doubt it will, in myriad ways, be her salvation.
Until then, this will all be here waiting for her, undisturbed:

So I closed the door to the recently abandoned room, I have now blogged the whole thing, and I try to assure Katie that it will be all right.  She will survive birth, joy, rebellion and finally abandonment.  Soon, too soon, she will be laying on Gracie's bed, crying over the shelf(ves) full of dolls and missing her baby who is now an independent woman walking around in the world with her own opinions, hopes and dreams.  And a room full of stuff that needs to be sorted into piles to throw away or pack really well, to wait for a baby to be born to inherit them.
Because in the end, children leave. 
Of course they do.  It is then your job to just be there.  Waiting.  Until they come back.
And they do come back, bringing you grandchildren.  New links, to be loved and held and told their own story, the story of them.  Who knows how that story will end?
It never ends. 
That's the beauty of it.