A Mother's Journey

My Freckles Ready to Take on The World

I stared up at the dark ceiling in the wee hours of Sunday night listening to the dogs dream while my husband softly snored beside me. With my Winter Break at a close and Monday morning just about a heartbeat away, I should be sleeping, but instead my mind was on that freckle-faced young woman in Rhode Island who has been a light in my life since the day she was born, even when she made me crazy. She was a cranky baby, always restless and eager to "go", usually wherever her sister was going. She also was leery of people, taking her time sizing them up before she made a decision on whether or not she was going to grace them with a snuggle, her brilliant smile, or more than a cursory moment of her attention. Her angsty teenage face was nearly our undoing!  As I let my mind walk through the stages of her childhood, I wondered if even as I lay warm in my bed she was exhausted from her first day of Officer Candidate School. Had strangers been yelling at her all day? Did they make her cut her hair? Was her beautiful head spinning from the events of day #1 in this journey she's begun? I sent up a quiet prayer for God to guide her steps and remind her when she stumbles into moments of doubt just how incredibly strong she is.

I could tell you how proud I am of this child of mine who is no longer a child, but that would be a cliche' that doesn't even begin to cover what she makes me feel. She is the only person on Earth who looks into my eyes and sees things no one else can see, deep things, words I never say out loud. She is also the only one who can and does call me on my "shit". She will call me out by challenging me with an intellect far beyond her years and logically talk me into my own self-reflection. It can be supremely irritating and incredibly loving in equal measures. It also leaves me gaping at her sometimes when her words so accurately hit a mark no one else seems to see.

I've been wondering since I got up this morning how her day #2 would go as the world, life, and circumstance begin to shape the woman she will become. And even though I've titled this "A Mother's Journey", it is more appropriate to describe it as a mother/daughter road, sometimes traversed together, other times having to go it alone. Long ago my own mother wrote to me in England and said, "No matter how far apart we are, how long we go without seeing each other, I am always with you and you are always with me." Those words have deeper meaning to me now than ever since both of my girls became adults and began to forge their own way in the world. Every mothering instinct in me tells me to protect them from whatever I can, but every independent woman instinct I have shouts "belay that order". With trembling hands, I cut the tether, close my eyes and pray. It is, by far, one of the most difficult decisions of my life but it's the right one.