Of Cloudless Climes And Starry Skies.../Meet In Her Aspect And Her Eyes

{The place I am in this morning is choked up. My daughter will be halfway to eighteen tomorrow. This piece below was written May 17, 2006 - almost five years ago - during a dark and very, very difficult time. A lot has changed since then and there are no words to say how grateful I am for that. My daughter has weathered so many seasons of me cutting my newbie mother teeth at her expense.  I am posting some old pieces I've written every now and then to keep them all in one place. And also to celebrate some beautiful changes.}
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My therapist  (I have one, and I highly recommend them, they are like seeing-eye dogs for the mother-blind) told me recently that I don't need to hide.

I heard her words and felt the tandem epiphany that I am both hiding and trying to hide my beautiful daughter, too. I felt the heart sucker-punch realizing that I try to veil her strengths. They embarrass me. She can suck the quiet out of a room and fill it up with colour. She's strong. Hair down her back and legs like a little stallion. She has green eyes that see right through you and a mouth that can tell you how. She's a four year old version of Sophocles. The writer of great tragedies. Only a darn sight prettier.

My daughter isn't dramatic, we call it expressive and passionate. She isn't emotional, we call it sensitive. Which is actually a load of smelly bull because I call it roaring pediatric PMS. And God knows it has come early to our house, and two of a feather should very much not flock together, let me tell you. Doors a slammin', hormones a jammin'. Not good. Not pretty. Four is kicking my butt. 

My daughter went with me to the pediatrician when she was about nineteen months old. I told him I was struggling because she was so expressive at such an early age and I didn't quite know how to handle it. "Oh," he said, "you'll have to teach her words for her emotions." She turned her soulful eyes and big poofy lips at him and said, "That makes me frustrated when you talk like that about me and then I feel overwhelmed." Ahhh. Definitely not a child to talk down to. Still isn't.

She came out watching and she still does. Big eyes. Hides her tears. And a mind like a whipper-snapper. She could be a supreme court justice, you see, except for the travesty that I am screwing her up. Royally. I lay awake at night thinking more about that horror almost as much as the possibility of nuclear war with Iran.

Which should tell you something about her and my similarities.

She cries for children without mommies and daddies when I just want her to go to bed before I help her join that category. She adores Shirley Temple and has made it her own routine to pray knelt at her bedside (no small feat on a bunk bed ladder) to send her very own MGM prayers upward. The concept of unrequited love is completely foreign to her.

My bedtime prayers for my own little offspring consist of: Please don't let them be like me.

And then I realized they aren't like me. They haven't had enough time. I'm like them.

In the most wonderful way possible, I'm like they are now. They are still mostly unsullied. Mostly un-scarred. And the thing is I think she is beautiful. Oh my heavens she radiates. What is it Byron says, "...she walks in beauty like the night... ." That is my daughter. Breathtaking like the stars. Wise. Quick. Annoying. Yes, annoying to me. Because I am scared. Scared of her intensity. Her knife-sharpeningly keen insight that comes without the knowledge of the turmoil it can cause. That was me as a child. I felt like a little exposer. I just felt things. And because of that I always felt a little bit wrong. And very alone.

That is her, too. Her intuition should be branded as a beauty product and sold to Britney Spears. She walks into a room and it's like she sniffs. Sniffs the air for secrets. The emotions unbarred and the hearts unheld. And then she moves toward them. It takes my breath away and chokes me up, even as I write, for the pain that awaits her. Because people hate that. Hate the exposure. Hate the hand that rocks the cradle. With her I still call it a gift. Intuition. Perceptive. Loving. Caring. Keen. A wise soul with the tenderest of hearts.

I see a hill, I long to climb it. She sees the hill and she's half way up it. I'm the one yelling in the background about scraped knees and a bad example for her younger friends.

I'm afraid of the pain she'll face. That she does already. She hugs her neighbour friends and tells them she loves them and they back away. She's intense. I cringe. She makes them uncomfortable. Or me uncomfortable. Because I've lost that fearless honesty. I don't see the lover. I see the rejection. The hurt.

I've been trying to find the teachable moments.

Baby, God gave you a soft heart but sometimes because of that we have strong words because we feel so deep. Mama wants to help you have a strong heart and soft words. True, but what am I? Bambi's mother? And God help me. What am I doing? Trying to cover her up? Stop me before it's too late. I am parenting - it's ugly - out of pain. Out of who I am, not who I was. Yes, there needs to be the taming of the typhoon at times. But I've been taming the shrew. And she's not in my daughter. And she's not in me, either. She's in my hurt.

I'm not passing on wisdom. I'm passing on pain. Fear. She's gorgeous. And the wisdom I will pass on is when I see her in me.

I grew up on the 'strong willed child' jargon. It's seen as something very bad, thank you very much please don't focus on my family, that strong-willed child needs to be broken. My daughter is a lioness. A queen. A wild horse. She doesn't need a breaking. She needs a whisperer. We chose her name because it was one of the first women in the Old Testament who inherited right along with her brothers. One of Job's daughters, after he made it through those awful years. My sweet-smelling fragrance. My Cinnamon. Her middle name means brave. My sweet brave woman-child.

I realize the mother-daughter relationship is truly like no other. It can be more complicated than romance and more dangerous, too. Because I can influence her towards the her I don't want her to be instead of the unique, lovely individual I have before me. And I could miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity I have to look in the mirror I've been given. Mirror, mirror on the wall who is the fairest of them all? If I don't listen to the "you are" whispered to myself, don't hold on to it when I hear it, then I will forever parent her that way. From a sickening deficit rather than a release to shine. And like the crumbs on the forest trail I will lead her to destruction, not to her true love. Oh, I want to be her whisperer.

No, better yet.

I want to hear her whisper. Hear her roar. 

She walks in beauty, like the night

 ~ Lord Byron 

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies,

And all that's best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes;

Thus mellow'd to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,

Had half impair'd the nameless grace

Which waves in every raven tress

Or softly lightens o'er her face,

Where thoughts serenely sweet express

How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek and o'er the brow

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

The smiles that win, the tints that glow

But tell of days in goodness spent,

A mind at peace with all below,

A heart whose love is innocent.