My Daughter

I have one child.  ONE child.
She was my entire focus from the day she was born...and, admittedly, still is.
She's 39 now.  The same age I was when my own mother died.  As independent as I thought I was, and as independent as she is now, I was not prepared to lose my mother.   Not then.  Not ever.
A few days after Mom's funeral, I went alone to the remote cemetery where Mom was laid to rest.  In a moment of raw grief that I am glad no one witnessed, I wept uncontrollably because, just six feet below me, rested my mother.  Just one more touch, God.  Please...just one more moment with my mother.  Never to happen.
As awful as it was to be forced to give up my mother, I pray to God that nothing takes my daughter or my grandchildren away while I still live.  It sounds so corny to say, but that reality would be the end of me.  I could never recover from it. 

I was never a huggy kind of person, and my child isn't a huggy kind of person.  Coincidence?  Probably not.  I wasn't brought up that way.  My family hugged and kissed upon arrivals and departures but not on a regular basis in between.  We didn't need that kind of validation.  I knew my parents loved me.  There was never a doubt.  Everything they did, for the most part, was to provide for us kids, giving us the very best of what they could afford.  We weren't spoiled.  There was simply a reason and rhythm to the way things were.  We were just tight-knit because family was the only stable thing in life.  I think (hope?) that it is the same with my daughter and me.  Since her birth, every single thing I did/do was/is for her benefit, and I can only hope that she's figured that out.

Yesterday, I was late to a meeting at church because she called just as I was walking out the door.  She rarely calls, although we do communicate daily on the internet, and I knew the meeting at church could start with or without me.  I wanted to stay and talk to her.  I love hearing her stories and seeing her pictures.  Eventually, I had to cut the conversation short. but I really didn't want to.  My kid is raising teenagers and finally "payin' for her raisin' " as my mother would have said.  And I am an interested bystander.

My daughter keeps me young.  (Well...not young, but younger.)  I know the ol' saw about not being able to teach old dogs new tricks, but it's not true.  Every single day, I learn how to be a better parent from watching her and listening to her.  I made awful mistakes in raising her, but it never was because I didn't care or was authoritarian.  We joke that I spoiled her, but actually, I didn't really.  What I did was compensate for what she didn't have by way of my bad marriage and our divorce.  Watching her, and following her lead, I am more informed.  I am a better parent to her now, in her adult life, than I probably was in her youth.  Who knows?

I would love to know what things she has learned from me.  Part of me begs for validation before I die because, even though I talk a good story, I really think death is the end.  Too late to get that last little bit of satisfaction from those who reflect on my life after I'm gone.  Flowers die, eventually.  Words never do.