3 Months With a Daughter

These three months of mothering these three children have been wild and crazy and wonderful. It feels like I've finally found the right groove. At long last, I'm becoming the mother I always hoped to be -not perfect, not always fun, not always patient-- but satisfyingly more so. My love for my children has bloomed into something that fills my whole. I am more compassionate, more patient, more understanding. I laugh more. I have a desire to play more. I miss Nolan more when he's gone at school. I think it's a divine gift. Maybe I've matured enough to handle the rigors of motherhood more gracefully. Maybe I'm more mellow. Maybe I've just been needing a sweet daughter.

It really is different to have a daughter. You couldn't have convinced me of this before. Before, a baby was a baby, a child a child, (whatever colors you dressed them up in), but now I have a very palpable feeling for my daughter that is not like the ones I have for my sons. There are such intense urges to protect her and help her understand her infinite worth.

The world is so destructive to women. I don't want it to touch her. Women are either shunned, hidden away, enslaved, dominated, ill-priviledged, or they are adorned, worshipped for their bodies, paid for their bodies, seen for their bodies, worth only as much as their bodies are valued at. It makes me so worried for my infant daughter and my young sisters. I don't want them to believe what the world tells them -that they are less capable, weak, only worth the capabilities and aesthetics of their bodies.

Even in a religious culture, it's easy as a woman to believe that you are only worth your ability to create and nurture. In this belief system, unmarried women feel inadequate, infertile women feel left out, and even married women with children feel defined by their ability to homemake and raise babies.

I ache for my daughter to rise above these two creeds. I hope she will see herself as an individual daughter of God with her own unique gifts, talents, thoughts, emotions, desires, and ideas. I don't want her to feel like there is a mold she has to fit. She is her own mold. I want her to know in her heart that she is not her body. She is more than her body, much more.