To My Daughter, Before She Hits Her Teen Years And Starts To Hate Me

You're nine.

I don't know how that happened - one day we were dressing you up in your Pooh Bear 'coming home from the hospital' outfit and the next day it was all school uniforms, requests for ear-piercing and independence.  Time is marching on, and soon the topics of conversation will revolve around clothes, boys and cars.  Or worse, boys with cars.  I'm not ready for this.  Your Dad isn't ready for this either and in a few years time, you'll realize just how not ready your Dad is when those boys with their cars come calling.  I'm pretty sure he's going to make you walk everywhere until you're twenty-five.

You are my last, and you're my only girl.  Though of course I love your brothers, you are special in a different kind of way.  What did we always say when you were little? Girls stick together.  I mean, how many mothers and daughters do you know that have the same scar, in the very same position underneath their bottom lip? (This is probably less fate and more a genetic trait for misadventure, but whatever!)

At nine, the world is still a pretty small sphere.  Home, school, Nana and Poppa's house, the occasional play date or outing.  Pain comes, but it is brief, and usually in the form of a bumped knee or bruised noggin.  Five minutes later, you've forgotten the pain and are jumping back into the next hair-brained adventure or game with as much enthusiasm and disregard for the effects of gravity as your brothers.

This will change.

Not only do I expect you to experience intense sadness and pain, but I want you to adapt and grow and change and adjust and yes, even welcome these moments, good or bad, for what they are and what they will teach you.  There will be dreams that will become all-consuming passions, friends who will come to know your thoughts almost as well as you know them yourself and so many disasters and mistakes they'll be impossible to count.  But then joy.  And excitement.  And love - oodles and oodles of it.  And all the bad stuff will fade into insignificance. 

But before you get to take a swan dive into life, there are whisperings that I want to tell you, lessons I want you to learn, stories I want you to hear and people I want you to understand.  I'll tell you all about your history - how your Dad and I met, where we both grew up, stories about crazy aunts and practical jokes, tales about houses we've lived in and secret family recipes.  And though I'm not even sure blogs will still be popular by the time you're old enough to read these words, they are my gifts to you.

Strap yourself in, my beautiful girl. You're in for the ride of your life.