Everything is Sentimental

Seriously. I mailed off my quarterly estimated taxes today and it was like "Wow. I am Self Employed. How did I get here?" [insert ruminations and ponderings]

Yesterday, Little A and I went on a walk in the early evening. It was the most perfect day ever: one part early fall crispness, one part late summer eve warmth, blue sky with feathery clouds breaking across it, zero humidity, much ahhhhhhh. It was a long walk.

As we walked I started to think about her as a teenager. Then I thought about myself as a teenager and how I wasn't very good at it. I spent most of my time waiting for it to be over. To my credit I did stop this habit once I got to college. College I loved and embraced as the first thing that had felt real in a long time.

But, this is not what I want for Little A. True, there was some benefit to me being more or less the impartial observer through my teenagedom. I learned a lot; I wrote it down, my life "wrapped up in books." But then again, when I actually HAD to do something instead of just watch and wait, I behaved quite stupidly. Behaving stupidly is definitely a rite of passage and Little A is welcome to it, but . . .

Mostly I just want her to live her life. I want her to be okay with who she is always.

I JUST WANT HER TO FEEL OKAY.

I was pushing her in her stroller and remembering this one thing I did as a adolescent that I am ashamed of to this day. I didn't have any trouble avoiding the obvious pitfalls: drugs and sex and what-have-you. But I managed to be insensitive, crass, and disrespectful to a peer in a damaging way that may have affected him for the rest of his life. It also may not have--I just don't know. What I do know is that when I was thirteen a girl in the lunch line told me I was "so not pretty" and I never forgot it. Not that I have a complex about it, but it's there. So something I did when I was thirteen could have had the same result. I wrote a hurtful letter one time, partially because I had been hurt and partially to look funny and cool to others, but I took it too far. This was almost twenty years ago.

I should have been better than I was then. I really should have known. I had been smart enough to know how to hurt people and how to be hurt.

So as I pushed Little A yesterday I hoped that she could be better, stronger, more confident in herself so that she never felt the need to put anyone down. To disrespect them.

But when I thought about it some more, I realized that maybe shame is a gift. Perhaps if we can feel shame it means we can feel love. As long as we know what to do with that shame it could be a good thing. As long as we can make something better with it. I mean there has to be a reason I have been remembering this one moment in my life so much at the same time that my capacity to love has been increasing.

When I look at my daughter and see the road of her life spread out before us I know I want to be there with her through all of it (okay, meaning the childhood part). I want to hold her when she feels the sting of rejection. I want to show her what we can become from what we are. Even if what we are isn't so awesome all the time. Mostly I want her to live courageously.

Yes it's very sentimental, but such is life.