How many times have you heard someone say they wish they had said I love you more after someone has passed away? How many opportunities to say I love you have passed without the words being said?
Perhaps love should be expressed 365 days a year, maybe we don’t need a special day to show people we care, but the fact of the matter is, too often, we don’t.
That is why I like Valentine’s Day.
Valentine’s Day, for me, is not about expensive gifts, it’s not about a perfect romantic moment. It’s about saying “Hey, I appreciate you.”
That is why, every year, I make sure my daughter makes her dad a Valentine. It could be anything from a handmade card to some cookies that we bake to a framed photo of her. Again, it’s not about expense, it’s about making the most of an opportunity to say I love you.
Sure, the Valentines are from my daughter, but making sure these Valentine’s Day gifts are made and sent to her dad is my way of saying thank you for the beautiful daughter we have together, and I appreciate all that you do for her.
When Tom and I got together, my step daughter was only 7. On the weekend, she turned 12.
Twelve!
OneTwoThreeFourFive...SixSevenEightNineTen. Eleven. TWELVE! You should have heard that song from Sesame Street as you read that.
12 is a big number...big enough to have its own song! Almost a teenager. No more little girl.
12 is old enough to stay home alone. 12 is old enough to baby sit. 12 is old enough for a house key.
I have watched this little, blonde girl blossom into a beautiful, young lady who is smart, and sassy, and by no means a little girl. She is small for her age only in stature because her personality is larger than life. She is vibrant, she is creative, and (sometimes) I think she is more organized than me.
She wants desperately to be a grown up. She reminds me to sign her school forms, she fills out her food orders for me. She sets her alarms clock just in case I forget to get her up for a class trip. I have yet to do that, for the record.
She wants to teach her siblings everything she knows. She plays school with them and teaches them to dance, she reads to them, and she takes them to the park. She is responsible…for the most part.
She is, of course, only 12. Sometimes she forgets about homework, she has lost a phone, an iPod, and more than her share of jewelry. She still leaves entire outfits in the basement when she is finished playing. I often wonder how I missed her running around naked when I am down there collecting the vast amount of clothing that gets left down there.
So, not only is she ALREADY 12, she is also ONLY 12. It’s a confusing age to be. So many expectations of maturity and so many rules to say you are not mature enough.
12 is awkward…so many changes to go through, so many pressures to be cool, so many things to come.
For Eleanor’s 12th birthday, we did not have a grandiose birthday party, there was no brightly covered cake with too much icing, no clowns, no balloons. Those days are over.
Instead, I took her and her best friend to a spa. They had manicures, Eleanor got a haircut and her friend got a wash and style. Then, they each got their make-up done.
Once they were all primped, we headed to a little store called Just cupcakes where we got some lovely, designer cupcakes. They, of course, totally messed up their lip gloss. So, before we headed to the Thai restaurant (where they had reservations), we stopped and got them each a lip gloss to ensure no further embarrassing make-up blunders.
I left them at the Thai Restaurant with some money and instructions on how to tip their waitress, and I went home to wait for her text…from her new (to her) iPhone.
So, 12 is mature enough to have dinner reservations, mature enough to tip the waitress, and mature enough to have an iPhone. It is also immature enough to text and ask if they can go to the candy store and get Jaw Breaker Lollipos.
Of course they can…they are 12.
Thankfully, 12 is also mature enough to know that waking up the next day (on her actual birthday) with the chicken pox is not the end of the world.
Happy Birthday Eleanor! Enjoy being Twelve.
Black History has been on my mind a lot recently. It started when I was reading The Help, and my daughter asked me what it was about. I was embarrassed to tell my bi-racial daughter about the story…embarrassed, not because of Black History, but because of White History.
A friend loaned me some books to help me broach the subject, but after reading them, I was afraid she was too young for the content. Then, when I decided I should just bite the bullet and read them to her, I realized there would need to be lots of time for discussion once they were read. I never found that time…and the books have been returned.
I wonder if it would be easier to discuss if I were still with her dad? In our home, she is the only bi-racial person, and we have talked about that. We have talked about how/why her skin is different. She knows that if two white people have a baby, it will be white and if two black people have a baby, it will be black. She knows she is a gorgeous brown colour because her mom is white and her dad is black.
We had that conversation when I was pregnant with her little sister…who is white. We had been looking through Rebecca’s scrapbook that I made for her. All the pictures and mementos from her birth are in there—her birth announcement, her hospital bracelet etc.
I said, I didn’t think I would have time to make a scrapbook for this baby, and she said we could tell the baby her scrapbook was the baby’s. That was when I realized she thought the baby would have brown skin as she did. We talked about how babies got their skin colour, their eye colour and how genetics would build us a baby that was part Tom and part me, just as they had built her with part Keith and part me.
She was disappointed that the baby would not have the same colour skin, but at least now she knew why.
We have also discussed her hair…oh man, her hair. She wants so badly to have straight hair, just like her big sister Eleanor. She begs me to straighten it, but it takes so long.
Her hair is an on-going battle. She hates having it brushed through, and I have grown to hate brushing it through. Over the years, I had taken advice from various people, hair dressers, her cousins and aunts, and often it was contradictory. Some said I needed specific black hair products, others said just use regular products, I was told to use a product called Pink by one, then told never to use Pink by another.
Recently, I decided to take to the internet and learn for myself. I now have products that I like, and I found a brush that is helping with the tangles.
I do not know how to do cornrows, but I did find a great site that I am hoping to learn from called Chocolate Hair, Vanilla Care.
Both my husband and her dad have told me just to have her hair cut really short, but she doesn’t want that. I chose to have a bi-racial child, so I will learn to take care of her hair.
Any time I can find something in the media to relate to Rebecca, I try to educate her that way. When Obama became president, I took that opportunity to talk to all of our kids about how they can be anything. I explained that at one time Barack Obama could not have been president; I talked to them about persevering even when people say it can’t be done, and I talked to them about the importance of a black man being voted in by the public as the President of the United States. It was a great day.
Even something as small as this picture of Angelina Jolie with her children gave me the opportunity to show our kids that we are not the only family that looks the way we do. As soon as I saw this picture, I asked Rebecca who that lady walking with her children reminded her of. She saw the resemblance immediately. (I knew I looked like Angelina Jolie somehow!)
Perhaps I am not ready to talk about the tougher stories behind Black/White history, but I am educating my family in a way that I am comfortable and paving the way to more difficult conversations.
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