Jenna is updating her blog. Actually, I just wrote this for my parents for Christmas and I thought I'd share it here. It isn't what I imagined but I think they'll like it anyway. I just wanted to put into words a few of the things that stick out in my mind and let them know what those things mean to me. So here it is:
A valuable lesson to teach a daughter
I don’t know if he ever actually said it, but for some reason I have the picture in my head of the times that he did. Multiple times that I sat on his lap or he on the edge of my bed and told me that I could be anything that I wanted to be. Not to let anyone ever tell me differently.
When so many girls get nothing but criticism or worse from their fathers, for some reason, I got the good one.
My parents gave me the greatest gift that parents can give a child- security. The confidence that comes with knowing that no matter how far you fall, there will always be a safe place to land. My father added to that landing place, a desire to jump. When I was younger, it was a physical jump.
“We’re in a cave, mommy,” I explained as my father patiently videotaped the whole adventure for my mom, home with the baby brother who was the reason for the trip. My father had decided that at the sensitive age of four, his attention hungry daughter needed the spotlight all to herself for a few days. This might have also been a break for my mother now that I think about it.
“It’s so short that Daddy had to crawl. But I was just right.” For some reason, this trip has always stuck in my head as the representation of the relationship between my father and me. It represents all the roller coasters he took me on. All the science projects we did together. All the ways he pushed me to embrace the sense of adventure I now know he always knew I had in me.
My dad and I were the ones on the roller coasters, and my mom was always waiting for us when we got off. She has always been there supporting me at the end of every ride. As a child I was sick a lot, and although I was overly dramatic at times, my mom always gave her attention freely. I remember once when I was very sick complaining to her about how bad I felt, and she said to me, “If I could take it away I would. If I could be sick instead of you, I would do it in a heartbeat.” And I knew she would. And somehow that made it feel better.
“Why are you putting makeup on?” I asked my mother as I sat on her bed watching Oprah after school. I remember being so confused. It was four o’clock. Dinner was in the oven. We weren’t going anywhere. “I just want to look nice for your dad when he gets home.” The thought had never even occurred to me. In a time where it seems to be a battle between empowered-working-mom and the mom who freshens up her makeup as dinner is in the oven, my mom showed me how to be both.
That physical jump that my dad encouraged, the make up tips from my mom, all obviously have come to mean so much more to me as I stand on the cusp of the big-girl world. And while my mother still laments the fact that I don’t know how to make gravy, she and my father have taught me so much more. How to jump. How to land. How to live.
