We Are Daughters

Today I read a post called “We Are Mothers” (you can find it here). Being at that awkward point in life of halfway grown up, I find myself getting much more emotional thinking about things like home, specifically the woman who is home: mom.

So in response to the cry of exhaustion and the tone of joy that comes from “We Are Mothers” (you may want to read that first!) and the move in date for my second year of college quickly approaching, here is We Are Daughters:

We are the girls who come home to a welcoming hug after a long day of school. We are the girls who think too much about friend drama and a bad grade on a paper. We are the girls who let such little things weigh us down because you’ll never let anything big take its place.

We are daughters.

We know we mess up, especially lunch after lunch left on the kitchen counter that you have to clear time out of your day to bring to school or work or just down the street. When we forget to do assignments or email someone back and feel like that’s the worst we could do, you are always there calming us with words of how we’ll know for next time.

We don’t say thank you nearly often enough even though we mean it.

We are daughters.

Our crinkled noses and down-curved mouths might not say it, but dinner does look good. It looks better than Taco Bell at least! And okay, I really don’t like every meal cooked, but it’s food and a family meal is a nice break from the world that awaits us when we get up from the table. And we know we didn’t eat enough, that we should stop playing with our hair, that we should sit up straight, that you’ve had a long day too, but we don’t mean to make you mad.

Tears drip down our cheeks and we really just can’t believe that we argued over that again. We’re so angry and just won’t let go of such a stupid argument, but most of us just hurts because we upset you.

We are daughters.

Today, we are healthy, but we haven’t always been. We’ve broken arms, cracked our heads, scraped our knees, and had our hearts broken. We know you are tired, but we wouldn’t turn to anyone else. Like when we got our wisdom teeth removed and of course the procedure didn’t go smoothly but you laid with us until we fell back asleep time after time despite the pain. We don’t know how to take care of ourselves even when we aren’t drugged up on pain killers and we need you.

We are overwhelmed with this business of becoming adults, and will always wish for more time with you.

We are daughters.

We finally fall asleep, sometimes listening to you put things away in the kitchen and the nights I can hear you move around are the nights that are my favorite. We now fall asleep after you most nights, but we also know that’s not how it always was. We wonder how much longer you would stay up after us years ago, doing the things that could only get done when we weren’t in the way. We know you try your hardest and we also know you worry. If we can be so bold to say so, we turned out pretty good and all those little decisions that were constantly nagging you shouldn’t have.

What’s important is that we know you love us. We love you too.

We are daughters.

There used to be some days that we wanted nothing more than to just get out of the house. We know there were days that you probably wanted that too! But now that we’ve gone, we think in every moment that life should just slow down because we aren’t ready to grow up any more. We want to ask you to please stop making life go by so fast because we’re 13 but really just turned 18 and oh wait, that was already 8 months ago!

We’ve learned not only the most basic concepts of living but how to carry ourselves, seek joy, and love deep. It wasn’t necessarily a pretty process getting here and some days still aren’t much better. We really don’t think we know everything and will always come tearing back to you for advice. We’ll keep growing up and move away and maybe even have our own little family, but we’ll always come home.

Through it all, you will be there, and we will always be your baby.

We see our faces growing to look more like yours every day. We think you are the most beautiful woman and even though we look just like you, we will never see it in ourselves.

We are daughters.