It took 19 years of parenthood and seven other children before I gave birth to the one I call my mini-me. She arrived the year after my mother passed away, and we moved when she was six weeks old. If that wasn’t stressful enough, we owned two houses for seven months (we bought one before the other sold—never again!). During those long, hard months when I missed my mother fiercely and worried we would lose both homes, this tiny daughter became my lifeline. In the midst of worry and depression, I drew strength and comfort from her touch; caring for an infant, so totally dependent on me, brought meaning and purpose to difficult days.
Now she is 12 years old, and while my Lily has the crowd-pleasing, outgoing personality stereotypical of the baby in a family, she also shares many classic characteristics of a firstborn, like me. Sometimes exactly like me. She can be stubborn and illogical, but she’s not afraid to speak her mind and tell her brothers and sisters the way things should be done. Her instincts are remarkably good (maybe because she pays attention to the way I want things to be done), which makes her instructions even less popular. Who wants to be told what to do by their little sister? Especially if she’s right?
She’s always been precocious. I’ll never forget the day she learned to ride a bike without training wheels. No one taught her—she just asked one of the kids to pick her up and put her on the seat and away she went! At barely four years old her feet didn’t touch the ground, but that didn’t stop my Lily. Very little stops my Lily.
Occasionally, however, I’m reminded that my big, brave daughter is really just a little girl. This spring a friend asked Lily to join her family for nine days at her grandmother’s house on the beach. Our other kids were jealous. We were all jealous. But from almost the moment she passed beyond the distance where going to get her might have been an option, Lily was struck with a powerful case of homesickness.
She contacted me constantly and in every possible way: text, phone call, Skype, FaceTime, Instagram chat. She would have sent smoke signals if she knew how.
Mommy, I miss you.
I’m homesick.
I miss you, Mommy.
The same words, over and over, again and again, day after day. I’m not sure which of us was more miserable. Her friend’s mother called and texted me too. It was hard for her to watch, but thankfully Lily was with good people who loved her.
She left on Sunday, and I dropped a card in the mail Monday morning. I told her to check the mailbox each day; the anticipation seemed to do her good. She called on Thursday when it arrived, a hint of happiness in her voice. Lily and I talked as I drove my fifteen-year-old son home from track practice, her voice transmitting clearly through my car’s speakers.
“I thought Ryan and Riley were my best friends…but, Mommy, you’re my best friend.”
My son and I looked at each other, identical raised eyebrows and looks of wonderment on our faces, and it was clear I was not the only one who believed no sweeter words had been spoken. Later we ordered Lily her favorite board game with two-day shipping, since she wouldn’t be home for another five days. It provided the suspense of a surprise before it arrived and hours of play and distraction afterward, and it seemed to spark a turning point: she enjoyed her final days at the beach.
It was in the months before this trip when I’d started to worry about our final years of parenting children at home. Over a 19-year period we’d added one child at a time until we reached eight, and then almost immediately they began to stretch their wings and leave the nest. Our oldest left for college when Lily was only two months old. Would she think her last years here were too quiet when she was the only child left at home? Would she grow tired of just us?
Lily has no idea what a gift her simple words were to me that day when she told me I was her best friend, the balm they were to my heart. I don’t know what the years ahead will hold as she bursts into her teens and I ease further into my fifties. Experience tells me to expect a mixture of highs and lows, like forecasting the weather. But I know that on a warm, spring day, not too long ago, she declared me her best friend and I embraced it with my very soul.
Someday I may read her this story, to remind us both.
A mother is a daughter’s first best friend.
AUTHOR UNKNOWN
More about With Love, Mom
With Love, Mom is treasury of stories from mothers to their daughters and from daughters to their mothers (and grandmothers), including pictures of the women and girls that each story represents. You’ll find tales of daughters from newborn to adult; from toddlers to twins to teens; from birth stories to the blessing of adoption; and the courage of the single mother: all accounts of our hopes and our fears for our daughters, and what it means both to bestow and to receive a legacy.
Hear from Rachel Macy Stafford, Holley Gerth, Tricia Goyer, Jennifer Dukes Lee, Wynter Pitts, Rachel Anne Ridge, and more than 30 other beloved voices as they share their personal challenges and parenting memories.
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