To my Daisy

I miss you. So much. 

I miss every holiday at your house. Everyone together, you fussing over the food and tightly wound. 

I miss spending the night on Christmas Eve with all my cousins. There were snores emitting from every room, and I couldn't sleep. You let me sleep on the floor in your room, but Grandpa's snores were far worse than those outside the door. Yet, I stayed in the room with you.  

I miss your lemon cookies and your laugh. 

I miss our time together. We had barn kittens and books and reading trees, and we were happy. I miss throwing rocks at "those nasty blackbirds" who stole the others' nests. Not that we ever scared them off. 

I miss you tucking your permed hair into a blue bandana while you worked outside. 

I miss high school, running back the lane to your house with Roy. I miss you giving him water out of your best glass pie dish. 

I miss raspberry tea with you and Grandpa. 

I miss you telling me: "A face without freckles is like a night without stars."

I miss you because now you stare at me with polite interest. You don't recognize your Sammy Jo. 

I love you, Daisy. 

Love

I'm still struggling with the mom thing.  

I read a lot. I read how these fictional moms make their kids organic dinosaur pancakes. How they adore spending their lives at home, raising their children with their prams and playdates and yoga classes and shit. How they gather all their strength from and identify with Being a Mom. 

I see my friends. I see how they stay home with their kids, how they work a different shift so their kids aren't in daycare, how they work part-time in order to spend more time with their children. I see how great they are as mothers, how they radiate love for their children, and how they and their children are thriving because of their propensity for motherhood.

And I do not see any of those things in myself, no matter how hard I try.

I often wonder what is wrong with me. Why don't I relish being a mother, why don't I radiate love and patience? I keep B up at night, going over and over why, exactly, he doesn't think I'm the World's Okayest Mom. I wonder why don't I make pancakes and do crafts and buy organic and work part time and do play dates and nurture the shit out of my child. And I finally put my finger on it last night. 

I am my father.

I show my love by working. By being gone 12 hours, 4 days a week, and feeling enormously guilty for it. By putting part of my pay into G's college fund. By budgeting and saving and buying groceries and the things we need and want. By getting up early even when I am oh so tired. By commuting to a better job in all kinds of weather, because I love my son.

I show my love by researching sunscreen, daycare, hospitals, shoes, food, baby gates, car seats, strollers, baby carriers, breastfeeding, baby food, preschools, high school graduation rates, 529s, and life insurance. Because I love my son.

I show my love by being the disciplinarian, because I don't want my kid to be a dick. 

I show my love by not constricting B and I to traditional domestic roles. I could easily clean or do laundry while he mows or splits wood, but instead I am sweating right by his side. We both clean, we both work outside the home, and we both do "manual labor". I want my son to see the value of a partnership, and respect his future partner as an equal. I want him to understand how hard I work for him. This, my friend, is perhaps the most important of ways I show my love.

So, while I am not nurturing, and soft, and loving, and maternal, and patient, and kind....while I am not MY mother...I show my love by making sure my son is happy, and healthy, and fed, and smart. 

I show my love by the behind the scenes things I do for my son. 

And that, friends, is okay.