"Letter To My Daughter" Guest Post Series: A Long Awaited Girl

Letter To My Daughter: A Long-Awaited Girl

Mar 18th 2011

Letter No. 1 in the “Letter to My Daughter” Guest Post Series – submission by smrtlernins.com. These guest posts will run throughout the months of March & April. Look for a new one every few days!

To My Daughter,

I always wanted a daughter.

My first child was a son. My second child was a son. My third pregnancy was over before it barely started. I still wanted a daughter.

I love your brothers very much. My love for them is no less and no greater than my love for you. It’s different, but not bigger or better or smaller and worse. The love of a mother for her sons is just as special of a love and I’ve never had a moment of regret over having my two boys first. Still, I wanted a daughter.

At first, I wanted a daughter in a more abstract sense. My mother (your Nana) and I were always very close, and more than anything, I wanted a daughter with whom I could share the experiences that I shared with her. The idea of having a daughter, of being her Girl Scout leader, of ushering her respectfully and with minimal embarrassment through puberty, of instilling feminist values into the next generation – these things all came to mine when I dreamed of my daughter.

I knew the moment I conceived you that you were going to be my daughter. It wasn’t just that we’d timed it carefully to increase our girl-making odds (forgive me if it embarrasses you to think about that, though I hope it doesn’t); I knew in my heart and soul that you were a girl. At that moment, carrying a daughter began to mean something so much more than just someone to mirror the experiences I had with my own mother.

I started thinking about what it meant to be a mother in a larger sense, a generational sense, even a Universal sense. Girls are born with their ovaries full of all the eggs they will ever have. That means that when my mother carried me, the tiny piece of genetic material that would become half your chromosomes was there, like a genetic matryoshka. When I carried you, the tiny piece that might become your own daughter or son someday was already there. When I was pregnant with your brothers, I never thought too much about that; during my pregnancy with you, I realized how intricately linked the generations of women are to each other. You have my cell wall structures and my mitochondria, and only you will pass that on in an unbroken matrilineal link from some “mitochondrial Eve” who lived 200,000 years ago. If that doesn’t knock you back on your heels, I don’t know what will.
That doesn’t mean I expect you to have children, though I hope I can be the kind of mother to you that your Nana was to me, a model for the special bond between a mother and daughter, one that I wanted to experience from both ends. It really means that, in you, I finally realized how very right my own mother had been when she told me about the importance and power of a community of women. We really are connected in a fundamental and primal way. Thank you for teaching me that.

Now that you’re here and have been in our lives for two years at the time I am writing this, I love you for so much more than your potential or the abstract idea of mother-daughter love or the link you provide between the past and the future. You aren’t just my daughter, after all. You are your own unique and amazing person, who came here with so much personality and fire and humor. The first time our eyes met after you were born, your thousand-year stare challenged me to be a mother worthy of a daughter like you. I don’t know if I can live up to that challenge; does any mother really feel like she’s been everything to and for her children she should be? I know that whomever you grow up to be, I will only be able to claim a tiny fraction of credit for the remarkable, intelligent, compassionate, beautiful woman you will become. The rest is all you, girl. You came here with everything you need: a link to a family line of strong women behind you and a boundless future before you.

Love,

Your [sometimes Smrt, but mostly just lucky] Mama

Smrt Mama blogs at Smrt Lernins: One Mother’s Homeschool Eduation