THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 20, 1995 TAG: 9508200034
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ELIZABETH SIMPSON
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
In my arms, her skin seems to blend into mine.
Same olive cast, same tanned shade. Our limbs intertwine, one moving into the other, making it hard to tell where I end and she begins.
My 4-year-old daughter, more than her fair-skinned sister who favors her father, sometimes scares me because I see so much of me in her.
I see her standing, skinny and tall, at the edge of the yard, and it's like seeing myself 30-odd years ago on the edge of my Midwestern world. I can almost feel the taut muscles in her nimble legs, the swing of wild, unruly hair against her shoulders, the thrill of the possibility of youth.
I am at once pleased and petrified.
When I am feeling good about myself, and she is acting angelic, I am excited by the idea of someone like me. When I am feeling bad, and she is impossible, I am scared. Have I given birth to another me? How can I do this to her? To the world?
When she whines, I say, ``Please don't whine,'' annoyed by the fact that I sound whiny myself. When she cries, and I feel like crying with her, I don't have to wonder where she gets her emotional ways. When she says, ``I can't do it,'' in frustration, I think of how often I've said that myself.
I remember the first time I felt this fear. In the first moments after her birth, her beaming father told me, ``It's a girl,'' and somewhere deep inside my joy was a fear of responsibility.
A girl.
She's a girl; I'm a girl. I would be her role model. Not the only one, of course, but an obvious one. Looking down at my tiny girl child, I hoped and prayed I would do all the right things, without even knowing what all the right things were.
It was an awesome prospect for someone who grew up with a lot of self doubts in a world where women's roles changed so fast that dreams couldn't keep up with expectations.
Sure, it's a different world today, with all the focus on gender-neutral child-rearing. Still, there are girl things to be reckoned with. I fumble over ribbons she wants in her hair. And dash to the store for fingernail polish when she asks to paint her nails. I hadn't worn the stuff in years.
``We're the girls, right?'' she asks, just to make sure.
``Yes, we're the girls,'' I answer, thinking the phrase sounds like a lyric in a song.
Two years after she was born came another daughter, upping the girl ante at our house. In the years to come I will be their role model and their reject. They will alternate between wanting to be like me and trying to be everything I am not.
The mother-daughter relationship is potent, grist of the therapy couch, premise of great novels.
I'm glad that parenting now is more evenly shared between mother and father. Maybe, between my husband and me, we can pass on all the right things.
His love of adventure will overcome my fear of change. My whimsical ways will balance out his need to be practical. I want my girls to inherit the best of us, and be free of the worst.
Bringing up girls also requires me to be confident when I'm feeling uncertain. Upbeat when I'm feeling whiny. Fearless when I'm not.
Sometimes raising girls is hard. Sometimes it is scary.
But hot summer days when they come flying out of the pool to give me wet, sloppy kisses, I smile, [thinking everything will turn out fine.] by CNB