1 Mother 2 Another

Sunday afternoon Maddie came into our home
office and plopped down in Brian’s chair as I did some work
on my computer. She sat silently for a few moments, contemplatively
spinning in his wheelie chair before speaking.


“You know, Mommy, you’re a pretty decent writer,”
she finally said.


“Well, thank you,” I replied cautiously.


“I bet you could write a whole book if you wanted to,”
she continued.


“Maybe, hon – thanks for the confidence!” I
replied. More cautiously.


“I was thinking,” she said, finally swiveling around to
face me, “you could write a book about me and Cora –
our lives, the funny stuff we say, things you notice about us.
Because honestly, we’re pretty funny and I think a lot of
people would want to read about us.”


I stared at her. Had she been surfing the web and come across my
blog?

Nope. She really had this idea all on her
own.


And I should say here that the girls don’t know about my
blog. I’ve been saving it, of course, since I began writing
in 2005, and I have always intended to hand them a series of discs
– or even better, print the years out and have them bound
into books for the girls to peruse at their leisure. Every day when
I write, I think about what I want them to remember from their
childhoods, how I want them to know what was going on in my head as
I disciplined them or snuggled them or enjoyed our afternoons
together at Starbucks. I’ve always envisioned handing my work
over to them when they’re full-grown adults – or at
least well into their teenage years – and drawing closer to
them as a result.


But I’ve never censored my work, never held back how hard
motherhood is sometimes, how it makes me so frustrated or angry or
simply overwhelmed at moments. I don’t want to paint my days
as idyllic or insincerely perfect; that’s not fair to me, to
you, or to the girls down the road.


So I’ve never wanted to let the girls read my writing in
their early lives – I don’t want them to worry when
they read about a really bad day, or how I beat myself up once (or
a hundred times) for some mistake I made.


All this to say that the conversation at that moment was making me
a wee bit uncomfortable.


“Well, you know, honey, Mommy already does write a sort of
book about your lives,” I ventured. Maddie perked up.


“You do? Already?”


“Yep. Most days I try to write down what’s been going
on with you two, or funny things you’ve said that I want to
remember, or special events we’ll want to talk about in the
future.”


“And where’s it printed?” Maddie asked.


“Nowhere,” I answered truthfully, grateful for the
precision of the question.


“Oh,” Maddie said disappointedly. “I guess
it’s not that big a deal then.” And she got up and
left.


So the stories are safe for a while more. But some day, my girls
will sit down, maybe in a Starbucks over a hot cocoa, and dig in
and relive their childhoods – and hopefully know me a little
bit better.