My mother died quite suddenly when I was a 20-year-old college junior. After my mother died, I had to live with the knowledge that we truly are promised no tomorrows and that each moment could be our last.  Since we were very close, it was a life-altering event that very much shaped what I brought to being the mother of my own three daughters. That is very important to me since being a mother was something I knew I wanted to be for as long as I can remember.  I knew it was one of my callings.

But, when you lose your mother at such a young age, before you really begin to have the questions that guide your life that only she can answer, it shapes you in ways you might not have anticipated.  However, in my case, it was in ways that I believe enriched my daughters’ lives.  So much so that sometimes I believe it happened for just that purpose.  One of the most profound ways was in preparing them to meet this big thing we call life and all that it can throw at you.  I’ve been thinking about this lately because my oldest daughter, who, with her two children, returned to live with me after her divorce, is packing to leave.  She came to stay with me to save up for a house and she is in the process of making that happen.

When I had my daughters, now 25, 34, and the oldest who will be 36 next month, I began journaling about them from the moment I knew they were possibilities. I continued until after they left for college. If I died, I wanted them to know that I knew them, and loved them more than words could ever convey and  wanted them to know what they were like and what they did.  I wanted to give them the same sense of wholeness and unconditional love that my parents gave me that serves as the foundation for being able to have a confidence that cannot be broken—shaken maybe, but not broken.  I wanted them to have the answers to the questions I was unable to ask my mother when I was pregnant with my daughters and raising them.  They were questions a 20-year-old would not yet have experience enough to ask.

You can imagine how heartening it was when my oldest daughter was pregnant with her first child and asked to have the journals I had written about her.  Even though I was there to answer her questions, she wanted to see what it was like when I was pregnant with her.

I taught my daughters to be self reliant and to have a sense of themselves that did not depend on acceptance by others.  As you can imagine, none of my daughters pledged sororities.  Oh, they were social creatures, alright.  One one even made the attempt–in fact, the one least likely to do so.  But, I’m sure it was this very sense of independence that her evaluators sensed that caused them to reject her.

I taught them to live with integrity and be willing to face the consequences of their actions, rather than live life trying to hide from themselves, which, of course, is impossible to do.  When they looked in the mirror, I wanted them to be able to see themselves as they were, not someone they flinched at and wanted to hide from because they knew they were living a lie. I say that my father, a minister, taught me how to get to heaven, but my fiery mother, who thought nothing of giving you a piece of her mind, complete with cursing like a sailor if need be, taught me how to live on earth.  It was my Dad who impressed upon me the importance of being able to look yourself in the eye and go to bed each night knowing there was nothing on your conscience to hide from.

I taught them to love all-in, know that none of us is perfect, try with all their might to make it work, but when it didn’t don’t be afraid to face that fact and move on to Plan B.  Life is too short and your mission you were sent to accomplish too important, to allow someone else’s issues to take you away from your truth.

My daughter leaving has caused me to think about the process of letting go, and what we want for our children.  At their ages, of course, I’ve done this before.  High school graduation, college graduation, etc.  But, this time, I think it’s final.  You never know, but this may be the last one to bounce back.  That would be great.  Because every time I think I’ve settled into my empty nest, here comes one back again.  It’s always for good reasons, and I’m glad to be able to accommodate them, but it does make you ponder things about life.  This time, my pondering is about what we want them to leave us with.  What we want to know they have when we are gone.  Thinking about my girls has been a joy of remembrance.

A couple of years ago, it snowed and we were housebound for several days.  My oldest daughter had recently moved back in after her divorce.  She hates being cooped up.  By the third day, she had had it.  My driveway is steep, as is the hill leading out of the subdivision into the street.  We are on the second block of the subdivision.  This makes it extremely difficult to get the car out of the driveway, up the hill and onto the main road.  When my daughter said she couldn’t stand it anymore and had to get out of the house and go for a drive with the kids, I thought, “Good luck with that.”  I underestimated my girl.  Before I knew it, she had not only shoveled her way out of the driveway, but also down the street and up the hill to the highway and was on her way.  I could only stare in wonder.

I would never underestimate her again.  That is now our touchstone.  When she has doubts, I remind her that she was the one who shoveled her way out of the snow up the hill to the street, so she has no credibility with me when she says she’s not sure she can do something.  Whatever is in front of her is no big deal. We both laugh, but it is enough to stiffen her resolve.

When she decided to get her masters degree in special education, and to become certified to teach art, she did it with a toddler at her feet and a newborn at her breast.   She taught the toddler about the various types of art while she studied, so my granddaughter could tell you about abstract art vs. pointillism. When I visited, I could only stare in open admiration. She set a goal and moved toward it. My daughter accomplished both goals while working full-time as a special ed teacher.

When she came to live with me, the idea of being a grown woman with children and living with her mother was an anathema to her, even though it was necessary under the circumstances, given her goal of wanting to buy a house.  She kept telling me that she had not been raised to live with her Mama.  I told her that I was just glad to be able to accommodate her needs by having a place for her to stay while she worked toward her goal of having, once again, her own home.  She is making it happen and is packing up as we speak, with all the excitement and anticipation she deserves for working so hard to make her dream come true.

Time after time, I have seen her set her goal, work toward it, and do whatever needs to be done to make it happen.  Her determination, perseverance, discipline are incredible. I can die knowing that I don’t have to worry about whether she will be okay in life.  She will be able to handle what comes.

My middle daughter is tiny.  Yet, from the sumer she graduated from college with degrees in Psychology as well as Criminal Justice, she traveled the world alone.  She is like a river; when she meets obstacles, she simply goes around them.  She is amazing.

She wanted to spend the summer traveling in Europe, but he had no money.  So she held an art show and for the first time ever, sold her art.  She made enough money to get her through the entire summer and have some left over.

In September, she attended Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, and when that didn’t suit her, transferred to London and finished up  her grande diplomé (this was back before they had them all over the US; back when you had to travel there to attend).  When we went to London to attend her graduation, all the top French chefs who taught there expressed to me their great love for her and their sadness at seeing her graduate.  She spoke little French, but had captured their hearts.

And this was my “difficult child,” the one I had to go visit the headmaster at her school about on more than one occasion.  I finally realized when she was around 11 years old that she was never going to be compliant kid or color inside the lines of life.  She was going to draw her own picture.  She was always going to march to the beat of her own drum.  I realized that my job was to teach her how to stay true to herself, yet navigate the world, and protect her from others who wanted to impose their expectations on her–and teach her how to eventually protect herself from them.  Boy, did she learn that lesson well.

Being so tiny and traveling the world alone, she learned to do things like be ferocious and loud when she needs to in order to counter the idea people have that they can take advantage of her because she looks like a lightweight.  Bad call to try that with her.  She will set you straight in a minute and not give it another thought. It’s amazing to watch.  You won’t make that mistake again.  And you’ll think about it twice before trying it on anyone else.

She continued to travel for years, rejecting the lifestyle her classmates had adopted of getting 9-5 jobs, getting married and having kids. While they were doing that, she was on a mountaintop in Turkey cleaning toilets at a bed and breakfast to earn her keep and freaking out over a fellow traveler she met falling off the mountain to his death.  Or she was waking up on the banks of a crystal clear lake on a fjord in Iceland to find a dead body floating in the water beside her.  Or in a remote South Sea island teaching children with rotted teeth about the world they may never see and experience. Or getting lost in the deep Oregon woods with the state patrol calling me and asking if I was her mother and notifying me they could not find her (thank God they did!). Or having her clothes (and everything else) get totally moldy in the Costa Rican humidity while she was away traveling.

I had to set straight more than one friend or family member who asked, “Don’t you think you should make her come home and settle down now?”  “Make her come home?” She was a grown woman! “Settle down?”  Who was I too tell her what she should do with her life?  I had not raised my daughters to have minds of their own, only to try to make them live the life others would choose for them–even me!

She worked hard to earn her masters in counseling psychology, only to call me one day and tell me that she decided during a counseling session that she did not want to spend her life listening to people pour out their problems when she wanted to scream at them, “Stop whining and get yourself together!”  After all she had seen in the world, their problems seemed so trivial that she could not even make herself pretend to be interested in them not working their hardest to make their life what they said they wanted it to be.

I am ecstatic that she is now (sort of) settled nearby, but struggling with the idea of being in one place and with someone after years of being on the move and only having to account to herself. She is totally into health and natural medicine and is certified in many aspects of it.  And she now teaches at Le Cordon Bleu.  She said that with her two mothers, aunt and others of her family being professors and teachers, it was in her blood.  🙂

Being brought up as she was and navigating the world alone, she has learned whatever skills she needs for me not to have to worry about her being okay if something happened to me.  The two of us went to a party recently with many of my friends.  I thought I would have to pretty much take care of her since she was in unfamiliar territory.  Wrong.  I went to find her and she was surrounded by a circle of people who were marveling and laughing at something she was saying.

No need to worry about her. She will do fine in life.  She has the skills she needs to deal with whatever comes.

My baby daughter shows me the meaning of perseverance every day when she gets up and goes about the business of living.  She began college nearly ten years ago at age 16, and has yet to finish.  Yet she is a certified personal trainer and owns her own business with a full schedule of clients.  Even so, she agreed to also work at a gym when the owner approached her after seeing her hard at working out over a period of time and told her he’d be willing to hire her if she got certified.  She told him she was already certified and had her own business.  He hired her on the spot.

In addition, she practically works another job as a member, coach and trainer on her roller derby team.  In just three years of skating, she made it onto Team USA, beating out 600 other women to join the roster to travel the world this year and skate for the US against teams from all over the world.  She was just notified she will be traveling to the bouts against Germany and Austria shortly.

All this, and she has such fortitude, grit and determination.  She loves sports, and will try any of them.  Not only try them, but put everything she has into it.  Even when she is hurting, she gets back in there and gives it her all like you can’t imagine.  I could not scrape up that much competitiveness in myself if I tried.

She’s always been that way and it truly serves her well now.  She works hard but still loves to have a good time and has never met a stranger.  Sometimes I think she is still in touch with everyone she ever knew.  She goes nowhere without people knowing who she is before she leaves.  She has that kind of personality and it is totally genuine.  People feel it.

I even appreciate the fact that as much as we would want her to finish college, she chose her own path and did what made sense for her and her interests.  I’m not worried about her.  She will be fine.

So, if I died today, I can go knowing that those absolutely incredible, intelligent, bright, imaginative, personable, vivacious, funny as hell, hardworking, loving, caring, productive, beautiful, young women I am honored to call my daughters, will be okay. They are why I wanted for so long to be a mother. They will be able to handle whatever it is that life throws at them.  They are not perfect, nor need they be.  They will continue to grow and change.  But, the basics are there.  They got it.  Whatever they seemed to be thinking about (other than what I was telling them) when I was raising them, they listened.  They heard me.  They took what I and their other parents gave them and did their own thing with it.  And that’s fine. They don’t have to be just like us.  I love their version. I want them to do their own thing.  But, at least I know they know what is important and can take care of themselves as they journey on their path.  They know that they are in charge of their lives and have to work hard to craft that life they want.

And ultimately, isn’t  that’s really all every parent wants for his or her child?