Flesh and Blood

Today I was overwhelmed with gratitude for my kid--my daughter. My flesh and blood, as the saying goes. Lissie. People talk about "babies raising babies", and in a lot of ways, I was very young when I gave birth to my baby girl. Young is a relative term--I was 24--which in Mormon years is a perfectly appropriate age to have one or several children. But I was still young and very much in the process of figuring myself out. As I look back on it, I'm grateful that, for whatever reason, I felt at peace with having a baby so soon; For many reasons, but Lissie has played such an important role in my own self-definition.

Every parent should take pride in their child, and I do take pride in mine. I honestly feel that Lissie has the most engaging and generally delightful personality of any child on this earth. It's only appropriate that other parents feel that way about their children too.

I love that she is such a sensitive child, and so intent on her relationships with other people. The fact that she loves spending so much time outside or trying new things floods me with relief on an almost-daily basis. I recognize that as she ages restlessness might grip her, as it does me, and she might get bored with the status quo. I couldn't be happier about this.

In many ways I feel like she's the sleeping Aurora babe in Sleeping Beauty--that somehow, when I was pregnant, or when she was newly born, a queue of good fairies dropped by and sprinkled Lissie (and yes, with that effervescent glitter emerging from their wands) with gifts that would only bless her future life. Beauty and song might have made the list somewhere, but more than that I feel that Lissie's gifts lie in her humor, intelligence, enthusiasm and her ability to invite and welcome others into her love; to have fun and go with the flow, and her precocious ability to act appropriately, wherever we are, the majority of the time (she is still two, after all).

The funny thing about Sleeping Beauty is that the parents didn't do a darned thing to deserve such lovely magical benefactors. But that's beside the point. Even if, as she grows, Lissie's gifts alter, or she grows in unexpected ways, she will always be my flesh and blood. A part of me. And in ways I don't think I understand yet, Lissie has performed the work of the good fairy on me, sprinkling me with that effervescent dust, bestowing me with gifts that will only bless my future life too.