My Daughter?

My Baby, My Little Girl. Sometimes I just sit and stare at her. I just take her in and I can’t believe she is mine. I can’t equate her with that thing that caused that little blue line so many years ago, that line that made me shake and crumple in to tears on the bathroom floor and pray and make promises into the air I was terrified I could not keep.


When she sleeps, the way her face relaxes and her body curls reminds me of that little baby I used to dress in cotton onesies, and lay on my chest, and hope she would stay asleep for at least a few hours. And then hope even more that she would wake up every time too.



And when I see her run in, with leaves in her hair, and sometimes dirt on her face, with no shoes and blackened feet, from play time outside, I often look at her and wonder where the parents of this little urchin can be found.



Her little frame seems so tiny in comparison to the early pubescent bodies of the older girls that pass her by more quickly on the way into the building. Her tiny, skinny arms and legs are no match for the doors that seem so heavy while she struggles to open them, and her three pound back pack threatens to pull her to the ground. I watch this scene every morning that I drop her off at her school, and I still get tight throat when I send that itty bitty thing off into the world all alone. She is taller than most of the boys and girls in her class, so why, when I look at her, does she seem so much tinier and more fragile than all of the other children?



And then, yesterday, with her hair in curls, wearing her velvety dress with the green sash, and a ridiculous necklace, this tall pretty girl, with a face that looks vaguely like my mother’s, stood against the wall so I could take a picture. She paced the living room with her head held high, taking proud pristine steps, and moving so as not to muffle her hair. Her freckles seem to be fading and her cheek bones are beginning to take a deeper shape than before, so her cheeks aren’t so chubby, her eyes are not so wide, her nose is not so flat against her skin. She doesn’t fall when she crosses one ankle over another to walk like a beauty queen, and she doesn’t press her teeth together in a grit and open her lips to “smile” for a camera like the little clown she used to be; she’s growing up.



I know she’s still little, and there is so much left to teach her, and watch her do, before I have to really let her go, but now and then, when she holds herself like this, I see a flash of the woman she might become. I hope she will always cross a room so confidently and so plainly and proudly aware of how beautiful she is.