raise a happy, healthy, loving daughter

Tonight I found a little black box on my dresser with the following note attached:

Dear Mommy, I just wanted to let you know how great of a mom you have been to me. You care for me when I’m sick, you feed me delicious food, and most of all, you love me. I don’t always remember that when I get in trouble, it’s for a reason. I just forget what a great mom you are and how much you love me. Sometimes I feel like I don’t tell you I love you enough…well I do and always will. Love, Emelemadingdong

Inside the litte box was a bling-bling necklace she bought at Wal-Mart with her own money. It’s so beautiful. I remember the night she was buying it. I didn’t know what she was doing, but she insisted that we go on towards the car without her when we were done grocery shopping a couple of weeks ago.

::sniff:: God, I love my kid!

Alright. So my daughter’s cleaning out her bedroom before our Christmas guests arrive, and she makes several trips to the trash can. No big shocker there. But when I went to the trash myself to throw something away, I notice a paper with a poem on it sitting right on top. Since I’m the kind of mom who saves everything, I decide to rescue it. On the paper were the following poems:

Feelings

Depressed is what I feel, lonely is what I feel,
Hated and unliked is what I feel,
I should have known, I was alone.
I never feel like I am home.
I feel so…misunderstood.

Tears

Tears is all I see today,
Tears is all I hear today,
Tears is all I feel today,
Tears is all I smell today,
Tears is all I cry today.

I keep telling myself I’m not going to freak out about this. This is exactly how I used to be, and I think I turned out O.K. I keep thinking, does my kid act depressed, and I’m oblivious? I really don’t think so. We talk about everything! I can’t figure it out. I have been giving her more responsibilities lately, and I probably have been a little critical. She’s always been dramatic, though. She rarely gets punished for anything because she’s a good kid, but when she does, it’s as if her world is crushed.

I’m a poet, too, and when I’m trying to deal with strong emotions, that’s what I do. When I was younger, I used to write some biting, angry stuff. Once I got it down on paper, I felt better & went on. I found not too long ago, that I felt even more liberated when I let go of those poems, too, so I started throwing away the old ones written from sadness and anger. When I no longer needed to revisit that pain by re-reading the poems, I felt free.

I’m hoping that’s what Emily has done. I’m hoping that she was able to express herself in writing, and that it has served its purpose. Now I just have to figure out how to approach it in such a way that she doesn’t think I’ve violated her provacy. I’ll never forget how betrayed I felt when my mom read my poetry journal when I was a teenager and drilled me about some of the statements I had made. I know she was only concerned, but I was really hurt. It was just a creative outlet.

Geez, my kid’s just turning 11 next month and she’s already a brooding adolescent. Damn that Gerard Way!! (I have to admit, had Robert Smith to help me brood.)

I guess I won’t know for many years if I have successfully achieved this goal. I can say, though, it seems like she is happy now.

The divorce of myself and her father, then my remarriage, was tough on her for a while. My relationship with her dad started deteriorating when she was about 3. There was no abuse, but we lived with constant tension for a long time. Her dad and I had seperate bedrooms for several months before I decided enough was enough.

Kids are smarter than we give them credit for, and they know when things aren’t right. At around the time things got really stressful, Emily developed small tics. First it was a little cough. When she would be watching TV, or doing something quietly, she would give these little fake coughs. It drove me nuts! Then the coughs gave way to incessant throat clearing. Then compulsive blinking. Then she would make a little humming noise. Sometimes I would get frustrated and correct her, thinking maybe if she became conscious of it, she could get it under control. She seemed otherwise “normal”, so I couldn’t understand why she was doing this. I struggled with the fact that I might have to get my kid’s head examined. Everyone told me she’d outgrow it. It came and went for a long time. The last thing she did was the little hum, and I don’t recall hearing it for at least a year now.

That was right about the time she took a month to spend with her dad exclusively to deal with a slew of changes in her life: Our roommate and her daughter (like a sister to Emily) moved out, my new husband moved in, her dad’s girlfriend moved out of his house, and she was about to start 4th grade. She “didn’t want to get used to” my new husband, and she wanted to go stay with her dad full time. It almost killed me, but I had to let her. During that time my husband and I moved out of the house full of “roommate memories”, and into a new place 3 blocks from her dad’s house in a neighborhood full of her school friends. School started, and things were finally stable.

She seems to be a well-adjusted kid now, and is having a great time in 5th grade. This is something we’ll have to keep working on as a family, I guess.