My heart is broken, and it is my daughter’s fault

She likes her pink makeup and glitters and hair fully done with bows and flowers, and I like a cleaned face angel with her hair jetting in all locations like a sprinkler in the summer. She wants her freedom, and I want my little girl to stay little.

What if there was a way to have both?

I was anticipating the disruption that often comes at the exact moment that I run the shampoo through my hair. The window of time when you aren’t able to open your eyes for fear of your safety. It never came.

I was alone to enjoy my shower. I didn’t.

This morning she didn’t come into my room to borrow my rubber bands from the jar under my cabinet. The half emptied glass jar that is covered in a thin layer of dust that almost lets out the secrets each time it is opened. The jar that is always emptied but never filled by her.

The rubber bands seemingly lose their way back home. They are disrupted by tangling fingers, better hair styling ideas, inventions with paper clips, and projects. They are her favorite tools to “fix that.”

She is happily tugging on her rubber band to make her hair do this or that. Her face is twisted in concentration and blissfully releases in excitement. She smiles and puts down the expensive beauty product to address me. You know that one that I have been carefully using for a year. She has a handful when a dime size will do. Her face lights up with anticipation as She asks, “Do you like my hair?”

I smile because she is smiling. I hold my breath as she reaches for the blow dryer that is heavy and cumbersome for her little fingers to grasp. She turns it on. I worry she will get burned. She reassures me she is a “big girl” and knows how this works. She is “setting” her style.

      She teaches me about setting an example

We talk about school and her brothers. She assures me I am a great mother. She hopes to have babies some days. She tells me about love and acceptance. She talks about how she likes last night’s dinner and how she doesn’t understand why the world has bad people. I tell her so you can easily spot the good ones. She stops and gives me a hug and a kiss and tells me I am a “good” one.

She has paid attention all those days sitting on the toilet watching me get ready. She has listened to my ideas and left her own. She has made special time for her and me in a house full of loud noise, chaos, chores, and boys. She has brought joy even if reaching its destination means stumbling over a pile of crumpled, mismatched clothes with stripes, hearts, flowers, animal prints and sparkles.

 

She puts her hands on her hips and says, ” When something is beautiful why not use it all.”

She has painted her face with greens, whites, pink, and glitter on more than a few occasions. She has dressed her hair and brushed it until it shined like I taught her.

She has learned the most valuable lesson I could teach her in that bathroom.

She sat in front of the mirror admiring our differences and similarities she has made grand statements about her self-worth declaring her beauty and that she is amazing. She has complained, been enraged, wanted comfort, and provided joy in our tiny bathroom. She has filled my heart.

Those rubber bands do not live here anymore. She has moved them so she can have her space and I can have mine, and my heart is broken into million pieces like that jar would if it shattered.

It is all those moments of rubber bands that tugs at our heart as they need us less but we want them more.

Those rubber bands do not live here anymore but all of the memories of each day do.

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