Happy Birthday Princess

Dearest Daughter,

How can it be that you turn 20 today? Our little fairy tale Princess has grown into a lovely young woman. It sounds cliché to say, but the time has flown by so fast. It seems like yesterday that you were a wee one, pushing your own stroller around and learning to walk. Saying “doogie, doogie, doogie” as you puttered around the house. Everyone thought we let you watch reruns of Doogie Houser MD, but no. That was just how you warmed up your vocabulary building.

If I am to follow suit with your brother’s birthday post, I would detail your birth story here. Instead, just the highlights. One, because your birth was 19 hours. Two, I had unwittingly hired a douche bag for an obstetrician, and, let’s just say we are both lucky to have survived him. A few years after he did everything to botch your birth and scar me physically and emotionally, he did far worse to someone else, was sued, and had his medical license taken away. So. We are both survivors.

You were in a hurry to get here. I was not due for another month and when my contractions started I thought they were stomach cramps. I had one day left of work before my maternity leave and was really looking forward to that last month off.

However, when we got to the hospital, my water broke and you seemed determined to make it into this world on that day. I should have realized your anxiousness was a wonderful sign, as you were and are someone who embraces life fully.

When you were born you were only five pounds six ounces. Then, you had the gall to lose two more ounces before we left the hospital. You were so tiny and fragile looking that your father and I thought ourselves completely inadequate to take care of you. But, the hospital sent us on our way.

We called you peanut and put you in the crease of a chiropractic pillow next to me in bed.

The first couple of months were a little dicey. You cried. A lot. It was summer in Hawaii, and I remember sweating bullets, bouncing you, walking you. The pediatrician said you were colicky, but didn’t seem to know what that meant. Let’s just say he did not explain it very well and certainly had not the greatest suggestions for getting rid of the colic. No one did. You let us know eventually what it was that was pissing you off.

At a little after two months of age, we figured out you did not like to be “swaddled.” It did not make you more secure, like I had been told. It did not make you sleep better. It made you hot. As soon as you were allowed to sleep in a diaper and a tiny, thin t-shirt, you slept straight through the night.

The world, and our family, was a better place for it.

From an early age you had a phenomenal imagination and a gift for seeing things that others could not. You and I had a lot of fun with this. The hedge around the house we lived in for the first four years of your life was the home to a lot of imaginary pets. Mostly Winnie the Pooh and his friends. I thought your imagination a wonderful thing and thoroughly enjoyed encouraging you.

I was a little surprised to learn that not everyone shared my view. There was that time in your “moms time out” program. I had enrolled you so you could socialize with other kids (since I was the first of my friends to embark on this parenting journey). It was a co-op program, where the moms rotated as teacher aides. Once, when I was helping, all ten of you two year olds had been taken out to the park by the school. The hedge around the park made the one at our house look like a Japanese dwarf garden. About eight feet tall and three feet wide, the hedge was like a jungle.

I followed you as you meandered. If Winnie the Pooh and friends lived in the dwarf version, what would you find here?

“Ohhh. Mommie look. This is where the hippopotamus sleeps.”

“I see. Are there giraffes too little miss?”

“Yes, there are. Come I’ll show you.”

Slowly the other children heard you and peered inside the hedge from where they were playing on the grass.

“Where’s the giraffe?” said one little girl as she peeked her head inside.

“N says it’s in here,” replied a tiny boy with glasses who was already following you around. “She says there are hippos and elephants and bears. Come.”

I thought I was the best mom’s helper ever, encouraging the other two year olds to take part in your fanciful world. Then I heard the teacher’s voice.

“Everyone come out from there right now. Out I say.”

A little one peeped his head out while I was waiting in the wings of the shrubbery, feeling a bit like a two year old myself.

“Miss J. N sees zoo animals in here. She is showing them to us. Can we please play in here?”

Once we emerged out of the hedge, it was explained to me that there could be glass or all kinds of unforeseen dangers in there, not to mention it made it difficult for the teacher to keep count of the ten two year olds. At the time the preschool teacher made me feel like I might not make it as a mom, but in retrospect, I’m glad we let you be your imaginative little self.

You have a lot more courage than people give you credit for. You are not a big risk taker in the same ways as your brother. About some things, you are downright cautious. But both your brother and I remember the time you read the Sunday paper at the age of six and noticed the open call for to Kill a Mockingbird. Then talked me into taking you down to the audition. I was the opposite of a stage mom and knew nothing about the theatre. The only preparation you had was me renting the movie for you.

The auditorium at the audition must have had 100 people in there. When they called you up to read, your brother (three at the time) and I shrank down in our seats with our stage fright for you. But you nailed it. Southern accent and all. You were also one of the only six year olds who could read fluently.

You didn’t get the part but you never quit. Here you are, 13 years later, majoring in music and working it out in community theatre.

You are an old soul. You have always been kind beyond your age group and pretty much the rest of the world. You are forgiving. You are loving and fun-loving.

You’re a little too nice. But your brother, your dad, and I are watching out for you. In case someone tries to take advantage of that niceness before you get your fierce game on.

Happy birthday to a beautiful young woman.

Look out world.

Love,

Mom

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