Sweet Marin,
There are so many things I want to say to you right now. I've done it in bits and pieces over the past five years and increasingly over the past few days, but since it embarrasses you when I gush over you, I'll just do it in this letter and trust that it finds its way into your heart.
First of all, you are ready. You know your letters, sounds, and numbers, of course, but that's not what I'm talking about here. You know how to notice when a friend is feeling sad or scared and are quick with a hug and a sympathetic word. I love the way you are able to come up with a story to identify with just about any situation someone is facing. At the age of five, you are able to put yourself in someone else's shoes and then walk alongside them as a friend with encouragement and tenderness. That's a gift, sweet girl, so thank you for using it. You know how to get excited about life and how to bring others along with you into that excitement.
I think you know how very loved you are and how crazy I am about you.
There are also some things you probably don't know. You don't know that I've been sneaking into your room at night when you're asleep and praying over you. You don't know that I even prayed over your new school clothes as I took them from the dryer - imagining you in them and hoping you would feel safe and loved whatever you experience in them through the course of the coming days and months. You don't know how scared I am to have so little control over what you will experience in this new setting - how you will be treated by those around you and how you will come to view yourself through those interactions, what you will hear and wonder about. You don't know how absolutely terrified I am by the random school shootings that are happening across our nation and how I can barely breathe in the moments when I allow myself to consider the possibility that this type of terror could come to our neighborhood as well, how much I hate it that guns even exist. [Side note for when you're older - if I had a time machine, I'd go back to the moment in time when someone set out to invent a gun, each time someone set out to do so, and I'd bring a warm batch of chocolate chips cookies and take that person to watch a sunset or listen to a symphony or dig their toes into the sand.] You can't know how very proud I am of the person that you are and the raw emotions that mothers experience as their children experience them. It's almost like E.T. and Elliott, another thing you don't yet know about. You don't know how desperately I want to really know you and be let into your world, how much I will really want to know when I ask you about what happened that day at school. You don't know how deeply I am going to miss you every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and how excited I am going to be to see your precious face again at the end of each day. How I am going to long for the school holidays to roll around so I can have you with me again to run mundane errands and talk my ear off all day long with your wonderful ideas and scientific perspective on life. How I am going to ache a little bit inside when I realize there is silence where your beautiful singing used to resound. How I may even begin to miss the trail of clothes scattered across the floor from all of your costume changes.
Finally, a few things I want you to know.
I want you to know that you are beautiful. Of course, you know what we always say is the most important thing about people: the way they treat others. You know that we don't dwell on outward appearances much and that we talk about how people don't get to choose how they look and how little that actually matters. You know that we value your kindness and sharp mind and sensitivity and sense of humor a lot more than we value how you look, and for that reason you may not even know that we think you are beautiful. You just haven't heard us say it very often. But despite our best intentions, you are going to want to feel beautiful because that's something that everyone wants for themselves, and so I want you to know that you are. And here's something that's just as important to know: everyone else is beautiful, too. Every single person you will encounter at school and everywhere else you go is just so stinkin beautiful. Not because of what they are wearing or because of how their skin looks or the shape of their nose or the style of their hair or the size of their waist, but because they are the only person God created that looks the way they do. Isn't that beautiful? Let me let you in on a little secret: if you can figure out how to be comfortable with yourself, you can teach others to see themselves as beautiful, too. That's another good gift you can give to the world.
I want you to know that you are not alone. However you are feeling, I can guarantee you there is someone else who is feeling that, too. Sometimes people are mean and they don't feel beautiful and they don't act beautiful and they unleash a bunch of ugly onto those around them. It's not always their fault - and in the case of children, probably rarely is - but their ugly actions and words will hurt you the same whether or not we understand their true source. When people hurt us, we have a tendency to harden, to turn our collars up against the cold wind, to shield ourselves in whatever way we know how, to close ourselves off so that it won't hurt so much the next time. Please don't do that, precious daughter. Please stay open to life and to love and to people and to friendships. There is so much beauty and hope and love to be found, so seek those things out and remember who you are.
I want you to know that I love you just because you are you. You seem like the kind of kid who will apply yourself and make good grades, and unfortunately you have inherited a perfectionistic streak from both your father and me. But even if you make good grades and achieve and succeed, we won't love you because of those things. We won't require that you continue to perform at the same level all of the time, and we won't love you any less if you succeed in unconventional ways instead of conventional ones. We just love you. The real you. The one who cries for a super long time when you get hurt, the one who experiences every aspect of life with great intensity, the one who has a song in your heart and a gleam in your eye. Please keep being you, sweet girl. Be you when it's easy and you when it's hard. Whether or not it makes you popular and whether or not it measures up to whatever measuring stick people will try to hold up to you along the way. [To hell with the measuring sticks!] Just be you and remember how very loved you are and will always be. No matter what.
Happy first day of school, sweetheart!
Love,
Mama
