Thursday, December 09, 2004

From Mother To Daughter One of the best links I have over to the right is Dooce.  She consistently posts the most hilarious, heartbreaking, thoughtful, and emotional writing you'll see online.  I wish I could write nearly as well as she does.  A perfect example is the letter she posted this past Monday.  It's for her ten month old girl, Leta, who while she is a long way off from being able to read/understand what her mother is trying to express now, will one day have a treasure chest full of insight into their relationshop courtesy of her mom's website. Here's the first part of the letter with a link at the end to the rest: Dear Leta, You turned ten-months-old a few days ago. Why didn’t I write this a few days ago? YOU‘RE NOT ALLOWED TO ASK QUESTIONS LIKE THAT YET. One thing that needs to be discussed right now, up front, before anything else: YOUR WILL. IT HAS BEEN MADE KNOWN. Somewhere in the last month I crossed that line from caretaker of a baby to caretaker and disciplinarian, and I’m not so sure I’m ready for this. I certainly didn’t think it would happen this soon, and to demonstrate just how little I know about disciplining a child I’ll recount for you a scenario that happened over the weekend while we were staying with my mom: I had you sitting in my lap and had given you a magazine to entertain you, but when you started tearing out full pages of that magazine — it was Grandmommie’s magazine, and if you didn’t notice already, nothing in Grandmommie’s house gets TORN UP, ARE YOU CRAZY? — I promptly took it away from you. That was the first dumb thing I did, I realize now, because you just don’t take away something from a baby without replacing it with something else. I guess this is what they refer to as distraction, or the phenomenon called Babies Don’t Know No Different. Once you realized that the magazine was indeed no longer in your possession you began screaming, so I turned you around so that you were facing me and I said — and I can’t believe I’m going to admit this because it is just so dumb — I said, “Leta, that’s unnecessary.” Unnecessary? UNNECESSARY? Who says that to a ten-month-old? Like you would understand perfectly that the situation called for a more appropriate response. After the word UNNECESSARY left my lips you did something rather horrifying, and I’m still trying to recover. You, you CLAWED AT YOUR FACE you were so mad. Literally CLAWED. You were just so furious that you couldn’t think of any more rage-filled way to portray your disgust. WITH YOUR OWN HANDS YOU CLAWED YOUR FACE. I immediately turned to my mother and said, “What the hell have I given birth to?” And she did that annoying grandmother thing and walked over to comfort you because I had been SO DAMN MEAN by making sure you didn’t destroy her precious magazine. And you know what you did? YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID? You reached your arms out TO HER signaling that you wanted HER and not ME. Just for that you can’t date until after you’re married. The entire letter including pics. 3:43:00 PM     |

© Copyright 2005 Alex L. Mauldin.