Showing posts with label daughters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label daughters. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

My Daughter: A Mother Celebrates Her Daughter's Birthday

Today is my daughter's birthday.  She is 30 years old.

As I said when I wrote about my son on his birthday, "I look at birthdays as a good time for memories, because when your children are adults and they live far away, your memories are mostly what you have."

"These are mine."


When our daughter entered the family, Hubby and I were newly married (nine months exactly), and I already had a son from a previous marriage. 
(If you want to get caught up, see my blog post "My Son)."

Unlike my son who arrived right on time (I worked the day he was born), my daughter was two weeks late, so I was able to take some time off before she was born. When the time finally came, once again it was a long labor. I decided then and there, I wasn't very good at this giving birth thing and I wasn't going to do it anymore.






When she was born, she settled nicely into the family. 






As with my son, I was able to spend two months with her before having to head back to work as a librarian. Two whole months!  Geez.  Barely figured out how to breast feed by then. In those days, not many allowances were made for women who chose to have children.  I liked my career, but because of money issues it never really occurred to me that I could stay home. 




As she began to talk, one of our favorite, though embarrassing memories was her inability to articulate hard consonants.  T's would sound like "F's."  She would see a truck and yell "F--," well, you get it.



Where our son was a more quiet, introspective child, our daughter was already gregarious and funny.  Our son would go to the park and hang back from groups of kids until he had figured out the best way to interact.  But our daughter would not only barge in head first, but would soon be calling the shots.  "I'll be the engineer of this train, you can be the conductor.  And do you want to be my best friend?"


She also always had a mind of her own.  When I took her to get her picture taken, she wanted to wear a little plastic bracelet someone had given her.  I said no and off we went to the photo studio. 

Look at her wrist in this picture!



I loved my son dearly, but he was all boy in his interests - sports, sports and more sports.  I was happy to have a little girl to spoil and dress and shop and watch musical comedies with.  She also could sing and developed an interest in acting, something I had enjoyed.  At the age of seven, she played Molly, the littlest orphan, in a professional production of "Annie" and went on to star in all of the school musicals, many local professional productions and college plays ("West Side Story," "Little Shop of Horrors," "Sound of Music," Into the Woods").





She was funny, original and unselfconscious. 







She was smart and did well in school.  She was a kind girl who enjoyed her family.  We played games on Family Night, enjoyed fine dining, shopped and traveled.  There were no drugs or alcohol incidents.  She got involved with a boy too early for our liking and suffered from body image issues as many teenage girls do, but all in all, she was happy, successful and made us proud.

One summer during middle school she cried to me that she thought she didn't like how she looked and felt terrible that she had braces and wore glasses.  I tried to tell her she was beautiful and one day the braces and glasses would be gone and she would look like this one day.



And then it just went so fast from there.

After middle school, where she graduated with honors, she graduated from high school with honors and went on to Stanford University.



After college, she worked in publishing in San Francisco before meeting her husband to be. They were married in our garden before she was whisked off to the East Coast where her husband was completing his Ph.d.





She is a singer/songwriter and sang with her Dad in his bands over the years.




And like her Mom, she's a librarian! 

She graduated with a Master's Degree in Library Science from the University of Washington and is now a Web Systems Librarian at a university on the East Coast (she is smarter than her mother - I felt happy when I learned to cut and paste on the computer)!



Two generations of librarians. 

Mother and daughter.

Old generation librarian. 

New generation librarian.
(I wrote about this "passing of the baton" on a blog post).

Someone said the mother daughter relationship is the most complex of relationships.  No one is willing to own up to saying that, because it's credited to "Anonymous." That could be a true statement, but no mother is thinking that the day her little baby girl is born. And no mother is thinking about the baggage she herself brings to the show. All you are thinking about is how you can't wait to share with her everything you have learned. 

As a mother, you want to see your daughter go off in life and succeed and be her own woman.  But you also wish she would take with her some of what you shared with her, such as what you value, a love of movie musicals, how to dry wine glasses or whatever it may be. You wish she would call every day and ask your advice.  And if she doesn't do that, you wonder what happened.  Could it possibly be that she doesn't want to be you, her mother?

Yes, she wants to be herself.  And when she finds who that is, she will find you again one day.



But as her mother, whether she likes it or not, she will always be your baby girl.



Happy Birthday, my baby girl!







A mother is not a person to lean on but a person to make leaning unnecessary.
Dorothy C. Fisher, quoted in O Magazine, May 2003
 
 
 
Probably there is nothing in human nature more resonant with charges than the flow of energy between two biologically alike bodies, one of which has lain in amniotic bliss inside the other, one of which has labored to give birth to the other. The materials are here for the deepest mutuality and the most painful estrangement.”
Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution






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Tuesday, February 18, 2014

The Mother Daughter Connection: A Long Distance Birthday Wish from a Baby Boomer Mother

Experts say that the mother daughter bond is one of the most intense relationships a woman experiences.

But even though we may have experienced that intensity - regret, disappointment and sorrow, even - with our mothers, that fact is the furthest thing from our minds when our own daughters come into the world.


29 Years Ago


We are going to be different from our mothers.


Today is my daughter's 29th birthday, and though we live far apart and I can't celebrate it with her in person, I plan to celebrate it by remembering happy moments over the years.

First steps

Ever the gifted comedienne



And dramatic actress.




Always a fashion plate!
She knew early she would be a Stanford graduate!

Travels





Stanford achieved!


And she sings too!
New Life

Today 

New Career

Happy 29th Birthday to my daughter!

No matter what our relationship with our own mother was like, we were sure we would never make the same mistakes our mother made.

For those of us born in the baby boomer years, especially those of us who had our children late in life, the generation gap between our mothers and us was particularly great.  Our mothers couldn't have predicted the Beatles, the Women's Movement, the political protests or the sexual revolution.

So of course, it was going to be different for us.

What we didn't realize was we would make our own mistakes.

And so we did.  And so it will go.



My own mother did the best she could with what she had to work with.  She was not forthcoming with her feelings, so I was never sure how she felt about how I had turned out or what I did.  But I never doubted that she loved and cared about me. 

Despite the years, the experiences, the mistakes and the miles, I was inextricably connected to my mother.

When she died, I found a tattered little letter I had written to her as a very young child. 


It was printed carefully on lined paper and it read: 

to Mother
please.
   come and see me.
   know one loves me
   the way they youst
     to love me.
       I think your the
          one who love
            me the most.
              But if you
            do't love me just
              say so.
                But I Love
                     you.

                           love

And then in case she didn't know who it was from, I printed out my full name.

She had kept it for almost 50 years.


Time has erased what led me to write that letter to her, but time has not erased that little girl who wrote it or the mother she wrote it to - "the one who love me the most."

And we mothers are the ones who love the most!



See you Friday

for the

"Ten Best Films No One Ever Saw"

and

The Week in Reviews.

Thanks for reading!
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Monday, November 25, 2013

Passing the Baton

My daughter graduated from library school in June.  I retired from my 40 year career as a librarian in July.

Just as I left the profession, my daughter began job hunting for her first professional library position.

She just called to say she had accepted a very good job offer.

I am so proud of her and happy that she has chosen the profession that sustained me for 40 years.

My daughter's and my lives have had many parallels, 37 years apart. 

We both moved thousands of miles away from our families, we both wanted to be actresses and we both became librarians.



We were born

"Welcome to the world!"


      1948                                                                                  1985                                                                                                     

                                                                        


        
 

 
We grew up in loving families.
 
 
 
 
 
 




 
 
 
 
 





 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
We Graduated from High School
 


                 1966                                                                                                        2003                                                                                                                                                                                                      


                                                               

We Graduated from College







             1970
 
 
 
 
 
 2007
 
 
 
 
 
 
We Got Married
 


  




                                  1984                                                                    2010
                                                
 
 
We Were Actresses and Performers
                                                 
 
                                    
 
 
 
 

 
 
Then we became librarians.
 
 
 
Welcome to the world of libraries!
 
 
 
 
               
     My first job -  1974                                                   Her first job - 2013
 
 
A picture is worth a thousand words!
 
 
 
 
My mother got a real kick out of my daughter. 
 
 
 
Once, when my mother was particularly complimentary about her, I said, "Just like me, huh, Mom?" 
 
To which she replied, "Yes, only better!" 
 
Mom!!!
 
But she was right.  Don't we wish our children to be better than we were, to do better than we did?
 
And now my daughter has parlayed her education and three years managing a retail store (while her husband finished up his Ph.D) into a library management position as her first job, something it took me three years into the profession to attain.
 
As the conductor of my own life, I have chosen to retire from the symphony I conducted for the last 40 years, pass my baton and bow to the next generation.
 
I know some of what lies ahead for her. May she enjoy it as I have.
 
Now I am on to my next symphony!
 
 
Have you passed your baton to someone?
 
 
 
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
 
 
 
See you Friday for a Thanksgiving Wrap-up!
 
                                          
                                                         Thanks for reading!
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