To You With Love Always From Me

Tomorrow you turn nine. 

Preggo! For three full weeks, all I could eat was Walker’s Shortbread and Lemon Curd:)

You made your strong will known from the start. When I was pregnant with you, I was so sick I could basically only eat crackers for 10 weeks. Then your love of sweets overtook my own normal tastes for food to the point that every day I would leave work and walk like a zombie up to the candy store and buy all kinds of chocolate to eat at my desk.  I hate donuts. I ate donuts all the time while I was pregnant with you. You were a mover and a shaker even then. Doing full flips and kicking me forcefully in the ribs at least once every hour. After you made your debut - two weeks early - you have never stopped delighting with your zest for life to the great joy of everyone who gets to spend time with you.

I love you in a way I didn’t even know I was capable of loving another human being.  I hope you and your brother both know that.  Sometimes I think the only true love is that between a parent and a child.

And, now you are halfway through your “official” childhood. Unbelievable. The time passed too fast. Even when days felt interminable, it was over too fast. You are incredible with your wit, your drive, your silliness, your intelligence, your athleticism, your pragmatism, your artistic sensibility, your generosity, your wanderlust. You are a beautiful person - inside and out.

But, I only have a couple more years of you being a “little girl”.  Then the world is really going to start noticing you. That both excites me for the wonderful adventures that lie ahead and terrifies me because I know just how harsh this world can be for fiery girls who know who they are and what they want. 

Your Great-grandmother Ruby is one of the people I have admired most. You are like her in so many ways. I would give anything for the two of you to have known each other in this life. 

When she was about 92, I made one of my last visits to spend time with her. She said something that haunts me to this day. We were in her kitchen and she was busying herself making biscuits from scratch. I watched as her wizened hands divided out all the ingredients perfectly from memory and without measuring tools. I was asking her questions about her life and just enjoying her company. Then she looked right at me and confided, “If my mother had supported me more, I would have made more of myself.”

Ruby was born March 16, 1910. I think she is in her early 20s in this picture.

Ruby Susie Coffman had a brave spirit. She went to college and got a job back when that wasn’t what most women did. She eloped with your Great-grandfather Henry and kept it secret so she could continue to work because married women weren’t allowed to be employed at the time. She raised 5 biological children and 1 adopted child on a farm without electricity or indoor plumbing. She slaughtered the farm animals when her husband didn’t have the stomach for it. She patterned and sewed department store quality clothes from pictures she saw in magazines with the meager resources she had. She was a teacher who impacted the lives of countless students. She was an active member of her church community. She could literally learn to do anything she wanted to learn (except how to sing on key:)) She was tough as they come. And, when she died, she left such a legacy of family and community, the entire church was filled to the brim with people there to celebrate her. To know she felt she was lacking in any way at the end of her amazing life still makes me weep. 

I know you are going to blaze a trail and live a beautiful story. There are so many opportunities for you. But, the world will do its best to try and tell you you aren’t good enough - at every step of the way. Everything you are as a young woman is up for debate, consumption, and judgment - your looks, your body, your intelligence, your desires, your thoughts, your choices, all of it. (It doesn’t get much easier for older women either but most of us get better at caring less.) 

You are tough. You have a strong sense of self. Much stronger than me.  And, while I can’t change the world on the scale and pace it needs to change to help you avoid the trickiest sections on the path to womanhood, I can continually tell you how I feel about you and make sure that side of the equation is a constant. I ALWAYS have your back.  Please don’t be 92 and telling my great-granddaughter that if I had supported you better, you could have done more with your life!

I am here to tell you (and all the other little girls on the cusp of young womanhood) this - YOU ARE ENOUGH. Right now. If you just keep on being you, trying things, making mistakes, learning from them, growing towards truth and empathy and the things that bring you joy, you will be on the right path. All that other stuff is just noise, designed to distract you from enjoying yourself and your life. Your one and only life.

Even when you stumble and fall. Even when you are mad at me and disagree with my choices. Even when I am mad at you and disagree with your choices, you have my unconditional love. You deserve to have everything for which you are willing to put in the effort to get. And, I will strive to be a good role model for you by taking my own advice in daily actions and words. 

I can’t wait to watch the next 9 years and beyond unfold for you! You are one of a kind. I am so lucky to call you daughter.

Love always, 
Mom