*12*

At 5' 4'' tall, you almost look me in the eye. When I move to embrace you, it feels more like I am holding a friend or a sister than a child I gave birth to on a sunny October morning after a night of steady rain. In pregnancy, I devoured all of the books about what was happening inside of my body and what to anticipate regarding the drug-free/midwifery/out-of-the-hospital childbirth I was about to experience. In your infancy, I honestly spent whole afternoons just staring at you...tracing the contours of your face with my eyes...those perfectly formed limbs and fat little fingers and toes. Yours was a hard birth and it was months before I physically recovered. I had wicked post-partum depression and I was only in college. Your dad and I couldn't yet afford our own place and we lived with my mother in the third floor of her empty-nest house. Motherhood was terrifying and thrilling and surreal all at once...

These parts of our story, you already know by heart, of course. But lately words fail me when it comes to describing to you how DIFFERENT it is to mother an adolescent girl. I used to fill whole notebooks with thoughts on raising toddlers and babies and elementary aged children meeting up with their first bully or tough homework assignment. Now I never even scratch the surface of it because being mother of an "almost teen" girl brings up my own teenage years in my memory and I want to both protect you and let you go. My years from twelve right until your birth were very tumultuous. These are the parts of the story you may never know...then, after almost a dozen years of smooth-sailing, life has gotten a bit thorny again right here. Just as you turn twelve. It is hard for me to let go of my history and remember that your life path will be uniquely your own. There is no curse, no magical spell here...but I am superstitious about the age just the same.

In your infinite wisdom, reading this, you'd surely look at me and know just what to say. I look at you hanging out by the oak tree in the front yard with your group of neighborhood friends and don't tell you life won't always be kind to a girl. Parenting magazines and books start to fall silent right around here. I could pick up any glossy print publication in the grocery store aisle and see "101 Ways to Get Your Baby to Sleep Tonight" but no "101 Ways to Tell Your Pre-Teen Life is Hard But SO Worth It". I could browse through and find articles about "Baby's First Smile" but nothing about how to keep your adolescent daughter grinning ear-to-ear like you in this photo at your birthday lunch. I want to be able to give voice to this for you...for me...for other mothers who have had difficult teen years and find themselves with a daughter on the verge of that adolescent precipice.

In the end, all I can do is stand back and hope that your wings hold, sweet one. All of these years I've spent with you--the closeness we've developed--I have to hope it keeps us flying in the same direction. You have amazed me with your intelligence, grace and depth from the moment you came into my life. You are the firstborn...as usual, there is a learning curve for me with each new stage and concern. I cannot shield you from things but I believe in your resilience, your heart and your too-blue eyes. Life is SO hard sometimes...SO easy other times...and SO worth it, sweetheart, always.