Dear Daughter: Shelby Writes

As we countdown the days until meeting our baby girl, I asked some friends to write their thoughts on having a daughter.   It means so much that they would take time to share their thoughts and I get more excited with each letter.  I hope you enjoy them too.

---

Shelby writes:

they are getting bigger.

nothing odd in this and really, it shouldn’t come as news. they’re children. the job of children appears to be to grow (or to clutter one’s household, interrupt one’s sleep, and use up one’s extra income that one otherwise wasn’t sure what to do with. either way). but it feels as if since Peri and Evie came along, the two of them have ganged up together and are riding time like a carnival pony, spanking its butt to go faster! and faster! until i expect to turn my head one day and catch them making off with my car keys.

it goes faster than i thought it could. i understand now the difference between toddlers and preschoolers. having girls as well as a boy. suddenly, Peri my open wee girl, has this life, this world unfolding for her beneath the surface of everything. she has eaten from the tree of knowledge, she knows now, that the world is a naked place. "i don't want to tell you," she declares, when i ask about her day at preschool. it's partly not knowing how to collapse 3 hours into 3 seconds. it's partly the complexity of realizing that her answer could--perhaps not to me, but could, somewhere in the mystifying judgment of the prosaic world--be wrong. and then we laugh and she makes up something to tell me and she cocks her funny little head and i can see her, at fourteen, twenty-four, forty-four, the woman inside the girl. Peri--you are smashing.

i look at Evie..at the age where nothing is cuter, in her mind.
in truth, her wise, sweet, chatty, constantly-in-motion little self, with her apple cheeks and her wild pique and her gorilla hugs, gets cuter every day. she blows my mind, surprises me at every corner. she bounces...it seems to be her way. keep it up my girl..my bright and beautiful, sweet wild thing.

dear Peri, dear Evie…
this is your mother speaking. every day you girls grow more lovely, more headstrong and yet more considerate. i love you more than i can possibly put into words. you have brought us laughter and sweetness. you have made my life infinitely more, just by being in it.

love,
mama

---

Thanks so much for sharing this, Shelby.  I love your perspective on being a mother.