To be Beloved; A Mother's Love for her Daughter

She is no longer the small child she used to be; the small child I could hold and keep safe. Perhaps that is what evokes those momentary sensations of grief; the desperate love I feel for her and the knowledge that I cannot protect her anymore.

Photo by Brian Eugene Snipes, winter, 2012

(PORTLAND, OR) - Recently, while having dinner with my 21-year-old daughter, at a popular downtown restaurant, the conversation turned to some minor issues she was having with her boyfriend of almost two years. We sat at a table in the corner, near a large east facing window. The Willamette River moved in silent evenness behind office buildings that stood on 4th avenue, as we ate organically prepared food and drank decaf Americano's with cream.

The rain-slicked black asphalt beyond the windows glittered and the neon traffic signals glowed garishly, enveloped in misty halos, as they swung in unwieldy north winds. While we glanced outside intermittently, slowly spearing morsels of food with the narrow ends of our dinner forks, my daughter continued to talk, and I silently listened, fighting the desire to interject with suggestions, advice, and concerns.

I had just enough money in my wallet to pay for the dinner and still get home on the Trimet bus and was feeling that wonderful elevated happiness that comes from spending time with my adult child, which happens less and less, it seems, as she works and attends university full-time.

She sat across from me, and her affect fluctuated effusively between sharing the happy and then the melancholy details of her life, as she has so often in the recent past. When she told me I was her “best friend” and no one would ever “love” or “understand” her the way I do, I successfully fought back the tears she didn't seem to notice welling in my eyes.

She did most of the talking as I sat across from her, listening intently, studying her pretty, animated and sometimes exquisitely blank face. I was struck once again with the harsh reality that she is no longer a child, and has grown into an intelligent, curious and contemplative young woman, with a strong moral compass and heightened level of personal insight, given her youth.

She's no longer the blue-eyed baby that I pampered and protected with Johnson's baby powder, Crest toothpaste, spotless clothing, Avon bubble baths and new dollies. She is no longer the little girl whose tiniest injury was lovingly comforted away by me, her mother.

I sat in the restaurant, across from her, enjoying the delectable quality of the food (chicken breast and simmered potatoes) and felt complete contentment. I was in my daughters presence and I could tell that though she was reflective, and her sadness was apparent, she was also happy in those moments, to be with me.

Our conversation meandered and moved in a relaxed serpentine manner, and I could perceive the slow evolution and arc of our new adult relationship and how much she's grown and matured during the past five years, and I felt a familiar bittersweet quality as I listened to her speak of her complicated relationship with her man, her fears for her own future and her many, diverse ambitions.

I knew exactly what she was going through and I knew exactly where my loyalties lay; that tug of instant protectiveness as she spoke of the troublesome times she and her man had survived; the inclination to be instantly and completely on her side and willing to condemn him for any minor perceived slight was still there, as I knew it would continue to be, however illogical that awareness remains.

We seemed to be equals in a way, as she shared her new perceptions on relationships and her childlike confusion when things didn't go well. She spoke of how wonderful and loving their relationship had been "in the beginning" and how much she missed that state. The melancholy her face conveyed to me would have been more appropriate in someone much older I thought randomly to myself.

“In the beginning it was so good” she confided to me quietly. “Once, when I spent the night, we slept in late the next morning and wrote Haiku's for over an hour, in bed, on a yellow pad. The windows in his apartment were open and the wind was blowing in through the white curtains. It was early, so the sun was bright. We were drinking Mimosas and laughing while we wrote Haiku's” her voice drifted away...

I sat across from my daughter and struggled to understand in just the ways she has moved beyond that child she used to be. I felt pride at who she has become, sadness at the little girl I can no longer scoop in my arms and comfort, and a detached sort of happiness at how much I believe her future holds for her.

I often wonder what it is that makes me feel such a strange combination of pride, happiness and sadness when I sometimes see my adult daughter and marvel at the beautiful woman she has become.

Is it because I nostalgically recall and miss my complete joy and engagement at being her young 26-year-old mother and how deliciously I relished that role, or is it somehow laced in the awareness that it is the passage of time that is so irrevocable and so condemning in its finality, that leaves me with that bittersweet feeling of fierce love amid equal measures of regret at that slow passage?

Perhaps the real reason lies in the awareness that I can no longer protect her from the dangers of this world. Dangers that have already harmed her so deeply. She is no longer the small child she used to be; the small child I could hold and keep safe. Perhaps that is what evokes those momentary sensations of grief; the desperate love I feel for her and the knowledge that I cannot protect her anymore.

She is an adult now. My adult child.

Theresa Griffin-Kennedy~

Theresa Griffin Kennedy is a writer and social activist, completing a masters degree at Portland State University in Adult Education. Her goal upon completing the degree will be to teach incarcerated offenders creative writing.

With a focus on the middle east and human rights, Ms Kennedy has written articles on the human rights of women in the middle east, the homeless and the mentally ill.

Poetry and the art of the personal essay are also strong focal points and continue to be explored in her writing. Ms Kennedy continues to write, submit her writing and be published.

Any comments, questions or remarks, regarding this work of creative non-fiction can be emailed to kennedyt@pdx.edu

Ms. Theresa Kennedy-DuPay~ - Feel free to peruse my personal website, click the active link down below and enjoy. https://sites.google.com/a/pdx.edu/theresa-griffin-kennedy/home