My Daughter, a coffee suprise

Tuesday, January 27, 2009


The other morning I was sitting in the living room recliner, drinking my coffee while over seeing the general chaos that is routine to our home every weekday morning. With five kids and four of them heading off to school, I need the coffee just to make it through those first few hours. In the middle of all of this, my oldest, Kaylee (13 years) approaches me with a look of great earnest and says, “Can we talk?... Woman to Woman?” For a moment my whole world stops. "Woman to woman?!" When did this happen? When did we become two women? I braced myself as well as I could for what was about to come, “Sure honey” I said, secretly dreading what she was going to ask. What could a "woman to woman" talk mean anyway? The birds and the bees? Boys? I realize that I am not ready for this but I put on the most composed face I can muster up. She then turns to the side so I can get a better look at her profile and says, “Do these boots go with this shirt?”
"Do these boots go with this shirt?"That’s it.
A wave of relief passes over me. “Sure,” I said “They look good together.” My relief is short lived however because it soon dawns on me that she is growing up and that more serious kinds of talks are going to become more and more inevitable.The next thing I know, though I am sitting in the living room amidst a flurry of activity, in my mind, its ten, twelve years ago. Here is this towheaded, pig tailed, little girl carrying around twin baby dolls. All these memories start coming back. Kaylee: a little baby taking her first steps, a curious toddler smelling the wildflowers. It can’t have been that long ago but it was.She is my first born. I was only nineteen when I was pregnant with her but I wanted her with all my heart. While the other young expectant mothers would make comments like, “I can’t wait to get this kid outta here.” I, on the other hand, felt sadness that soon we would be two separate people instead of the one we had been for almost nine months. Then when she was born all that sadness was crowded out by the joy of this new precious human I was holding in my arms. I couldn’t wait to get to know her. Now she is growing up and I can’t stop that anymore than I can stop anything else. Once her life set in motion it had a momentum all it's own, that I have less and less control over.As a teenager, Kaylee is so different than I was. She is even tempered, well rounded and she gets good grades. She can hold her own. Heck, she can even hold court with her peers. She’s so many things that I am proud of. She exhibits a genuine concern for people but not a sickly codependence. Did I mention that she gets good grades? What’s more than that is that she is beginning to show signs of integrity, insight and maturity that make me wonder at the kind of woman she will turn into.I know that one day she will grow up and leave this house, leave me. That the day of her departure is sure even as the day of her birth was. I really don't feel prepared but I will muddle my way thru this, like I have muddled thru everything else in life. She is not mine really. She never was. I knew that from the day she was born. I have had the privilege of “borrowing” her, of getting to know her. Soon she will belong, not just to herself, but to the rest of this world, to the man she will marry, the children she will have and the lives she will touch. I only hope that some of them will realize, as I do, what a privilege it is to know and to love.