Mini Me

First day of school.  She picked her own outfit and would not be persuaded.  Of course.

When Monster was born everyone commented on how much he looked like his dad.  It went beyond that, though.  Even from birth Monster seemed to show an alarming array of his dad’s quirks.  He was Tommy, in baby form.  And more than that, Tommy got him in a way that I just didn’t.  Long before Monster could communicate any of his needs or desires Tommy seemed to understand what the problem was: too tight shoes, too warm temperatures, frustrations in his playing.  Tommy understood Monster in a way that made me feel like the third wheel on a really good date: unnecessary.

I hated it and at times felt insecure by it.  How could he understand him so well when I was the one who spent the majority of my day with him?  What was it about their connection?  It baffled me.

Until Toots came a long. 

Suddenly I had my own mini-me.  I got her.  Understood what bugged her or how she wanted things.  Intuitively knew what clothing she would prefer to wear and how she’d like to play.  Because she is ridiculously like me.

I realize this anew constantly.  My girlfriends and I laughed at the way she turned her nose up at the Morton Arboretum’s children area.  The Morton Arboretum boasts 1700 acres of natural woodlands and wildlife and its children’s area is designed to feel like you’re right in the heart of nature.  It has streams to play in, playgrounds with climbing structures that look like trees amidst a woodchip floor.  Girlfriend wanted nothing to do with all that outdoors crap.  While her friends ran around the stream and played in the woodchips she stuck close to mama and kept asking to get back in the stroller.

I noticed her mini-me-ness again as I watched her charm her uncle in town for a visit.  She teased and flirted and played him all morning until he was helpless to say no to her.  I had flashbacks of wining favor with the grumpy hostel worker in Paris who seemed to hate everyone but me.  Soon after I discovered one of my top five StrengthsFinder strengths was WOO (Winning Others Over).  This girl’s got WOO too.

I am keenly aware of the different kind of responsibility in raising a mini-me.  She has many of my strengths and, unfortunately, many of my weaknesses.  I am tempted to over-correct those things about her that I am constantly trying to correct in myself.  I can easily assume the worst about her in the same ways I assume the worst about myself.  There are things about her personality that are adorable now, but I worry could spin out of control.  I’m always thinking ten steps ahead of the game with her.

I know that I will want to be hard on her for these things.  I fear for her high school years.  There are a few ways I played out my adolescent dramas that still make me cringe, ten plus years later.  There are mistakes I made, ways I wish I’d done things differently and I know that when I see her making those same mistakes it will be difficult to let her repeat my history. 

But how unfair not to let her write her own story, even if parts parallel mine in unfortunate ways.  And at age two she is already starting to write her own story.

Parenting a mini me is harder than I thought it would be when I was so jealous of Tommy’s understanding of Monster.  While I may get her a little more acutely I also get her a little more acutely.  And with that comes a great responsibility.

So I’m trying to take a step back and give her space to be the person God created her to be.  Because God did not create her exactly like me.  And even if he did she still has her own story to write. 

I think it will be a good one.

on birth and death and when they're connected...

At my dad’s wake my aunt shared a story of my father from his toddlerhood.  As a small child, she said, my dad would play quietly in his crib in the early hours of morning as he awaited his release into the day.  My aunt said my father could be heard at this time saying to himself, “what should I be happy about today?”

It is a fitting story of my dad.  He was always pretty happy.  And it always seemed to bother him when we weren’t happy.  It drove me nuts in my teenage angsty years, the way my dad would implore me to “be happy” when my latest crush/friend/school/rejection drama left me feeling anything but.  My dad though, was pretty much always happy.  I think sixty some odd years after he asked himself that question in his crib he was still finding ways to wonder what he could be happy about each day.

I think of this story almost every time I put Red down for a nap or to bed.  I wonder if she will be like my dad in this way?  If some morning I will hear her pondering what to be happy about that day.

Because I was very newly pregnant when my dad died I think we all hoped Red would fill the void he left.  My mom and I were both convinced she was going to be a boy, I think in hopes that somehow he would be reincarnated in her.  On her journey earthside my dad must have kissed her in someway, her red hair bearing witness to him.  But is that all?  Will I see other similarities?

When she was first born I worried about her.  I worried that because she grew so close to such a broken heart for so many months she would enter the world broken-hearted, filled with an inherited sadness.  And when I lay her down on her polka dotted bedding, thinking of the story of my dad in his own crib, I still worry.

I worry she will know how hard it was to grow her.  How I despaired comments about my growing belly and reminders of the passing weeks of pregnancy.  Her growth was a physical sign that we were all moving away from my dad, moving away from a life that included him.  Her entrance into the world would be a reminder of his absence.

I worry she will bear the weight of his legacy.  That we will all try to convince ourselves she is like him because she came when he left.  And she will wear that legacy like a heavy, ill-fitting coat.  Unhappy about playing the role of someone she never even knew.

Red’s life feels so connected to my father’s death.  It was such a strange, hard season, growing new life, while viscerally mourning the end of one.  Everything was upside down, topsy turvy and impossibly hard.

I wonder what it will feel like when I look back on this season five, ten, twenty years down the road.  Will time have a way of softening reality?  Will my fears about the effect of my grief on her come to fruition?  Will my memories of her first months be so tempered by mourning?  Or will I look back and only remember what was happy and light?

Probably yes to all.  Or something completely different.  I haven’t lived through enough hardship to know what time does to these things.

I hope I see glimpses of my dad in Red in the same way I hope to see it in Toots and Monster.  Not because they replace him but because he was incredible and his characteristics worth inheriting.    And I pray that time will separate these two events, his death and her birth, so that some day they won’t seem quite so entwined.  So that some day they will stand alone with only the happier threads connecting them.