Dear Emily

Dear Emily,

I have been writing you letters since before you were born, knowing all the while that someday I would write the “So. Now you are 18” letter and strangely, I still am not exactly sure what to say. I suppose that this moment of parenting will shake out just like the last eighteen years – I will just fake it until I make it.

I told you last night that you wouldn’t get the “Birthday Letter That Makes You Cry” until today. So, here goes.

When I found out I was pregnant with you I didn’t know what to expect. I was a twenty-nine year old woman that was quickly growing tired of being in my twenties and not really having a Life Plan. Your father and I had been married for nearly two and a half years, the restaurant was doing well, we had good health insurance. It was time to Have A Baby. Being pregnant was weird and wonderful. I had quit smoking just nine days before I found out I was pregnant with you. And even though I had quit a million times before, this time it was easy. It seems the Body had turned me into a Responsible Mother before my Brain got the memo.

I painted bedrooms and bathrooms and organized and got “ready to get ready,” a concept taught to me by my boss at the hospital. (Kathy probably is to credit for talking me off the ledge more times during my pregnancy than almost anyone.) I was as ready as I could be but everyone tells you that nothing prepares you, and it is most certainly true.

I had big shoes to fill in the role of Mom. I have been so lucky in that department. Your grandmother is the kind of mom I wanted to be. Even as a teenager I trusted her. We talked about almost everything. She makes me laugh harder than anyone. I have a Good Mom. So, surely I would be one, too, right? As I grew older and my relationship with my mom shifted and grew we often spoke about how things could have been different. She told me that if she had one regret it was that she had been my friend perhaps more than she she should have been. I always brushed that off because I’d not been able to imagine it any other way. And I loved that we were friends.

When I found myself in Chapel Hill with you, me fresh from a divorce and you just two years old and whip-smart and funny – I knew what she meant. I couldn’t let you become my best friend, my world, my sidekick, my everything. It would have been so easy. You were my reason. My reason for finding the courage to start over, my reason to seek a happiness that I often questioned if I deserved. (And the reason I made a vegetable with every meal.) I could look at my own life and ask “Is this what I want for Em?” and act accordingly. Decisions were simple then. I wanted everything for you. And for me, too.

We built a life that we deserved. It was filled with love and joy and laughter and soon the Single Mom and the Little Girl story was ancient history. You had a dad (Mike,) a sister (Lucy,) a Daddy (Jeremy) and me. We had a big, messy, beautiful family. In your eighteen years of living it was just you and me against the world for only about two of those years. But what it cemented in us is something that is a forever kind of thing. You and me. We were a tiny, little two person family there for a short while. And somehow it was enough. I think because we both love so big. You were more than enough.

And there it is. I figured out what to tell you on your birthday. The sage piece of wisdom you’ve been waiting for. You are more than enough, just exactly as you are. The very thing about you that sometimes makes it so hard to be you is exactly what will make you thrive once you just let it be. You love so big. Your heart is wide open. You feel all the things. Don’t fight it. It’s the most precious thing about you, your vulnerability.

I don’t really know how you fit that big heart in that tiny body. But I can’t imagine you any other way. Navigating life with a vulnerable heart is like keeping your head above the water in a raucous ocean. You can’t fight against it, you will never win and you will be tired before you get anywhere. But if you just lean back and let your feet float even the scariest sea isn’t but so wild. Ride the waves, baby girl.

There is a needlepoint I made when you were small. The letter on the back can be found here. In it I mention that “I want to keep my love for you in action.” The hardest part about you being so grown up is that the actions of loving you are fewer and farther between. You don’t need me to hold you or drive you (although you still want me to make you a sandwich.) So now I must just trust that quietly loving you is enough. It won’t be the first or last time that something I thought I was teaching you was actually teaching me something, too. If I believe it when I tell you that you are enough – I must also believe it that I am, too.

I don’t know if I have done any of this right. But I am absolutely certain that I loved you as hard as I could and that I will forever. I don’t know if I have ever actually said this to you but I say it fairly often. I hope that both of you girls know how much I love you. On the eve of your birthday you gave me the greatest gift you’ve ever given to me. In response to my schmaltzy text you replied “I feel so loved by all of you.” So. I got that part right.

I am not sure how to be the parent to a big kid. I am just going to keep loving you. Because so far, that has been enough.

Happy Birthday, baby girl. My teeny, tiny little girl that perches like a bird when she sits. You don’t have to leave the nest just yet. And you will always, always have a safe place to land here at home.

I love you.

Mom