I was not the mom who sat down and wrote out her feelings during her pregnancy in a record book for her child to look back on twenty-one years down the line. Thank God - I was a miserable pregnant woman.
But almost four years on, reading a host of letters from mothers to daughters in the Times of London, I decided maybe it's time. Before the pre-teen hormones set in and my daughter and I are at odds with each other. Before she starts slamming doors and I start debating whether my gray hair is from age or stress.
The letters are not strictly mother to daughter; there's aunt to niece in there, along with memories of advice given by mothers long ago. But it's hard to read them without wanting to write something, anything, that will one day be read and bring the happy sort of tears to my daughter's eyes that these letters written by strangers brought to mine.
Because these are the true keepsakes - not the huge scrapbooks some parents spend hours every week perfecting (more power to you honey, but that's just not me). We all have a letter somewhere, written by someone special at some time - a note from a high school boyfriend in his chicken scratch handwriting, a carefully penned missive from one grandparent to another. They talk about the lost art of handwriting, and it's true - I hardly see e-mails printed out and kept in a closet somewhere. Letters though, they last.
And so, while I hope to be very much alive when my own daughter is twenty-one, I think it's time I write a letter . . . or maybe two or three. In my own chicken scratch. About the girl she is and the girl I know she'll be. The girl I love today and will love even more tomorrow.
Go read the letters at the Times . . . then go write your own.
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