Timestamp.

I comment to her that the coffee from the new coffee maker doesn't taste as good and she says something about it maybe being because it's not, "what is it called?" "Seasoned?" I reply and we both crack up at the idea that our grody old coffee maker had seasoning. I love these moments with her where she's so teenager and so becoming.

He sits on my bed and tells me about the difference in the tests,  tucking his long man feet under the sheets. He smiles and we talk about how things will be fine even in this strange time and then he leaves to go to bed and I am overcome with the thought that in a year he will be gone. This is not a new feeling and  I know how to breathe through it but it engulfs me and I wear it on my skin for the next three days even though I push the thought aside and aside and aside.

We lump into my bed less frequently now but he comes in to talk and rest his head and she sidles in and soon enough we are in a tickle fight like so many before. She always gets the better end of the attention stick in these moments, a fierce tickler and relentless. He lets her have those moments, laughing and cheering her/me/her/me on. They are bonded beyond, all of these miles and the twisty flips and they've walked it together. That familiarity of shared experience and the plentitude of love from all sides. Consonant, good. We finally stop and just spend a moment all breathing and smiling before I ask one too many times for them to go to bed. We all linger, here and now. It won't be forever.

This one.

[I wrote this piece ages upon ages ago when I was really struggling with how to be a good mom, how to be present and attentive and there but still be here, with myself, in my own being. It felt right to post tonight].

She is my girl, this one.

This girl is all lanky limbs and big brown eyes and a witty retort or an observant question. When she wraps her arms around my waist, I can feel her little bird heart beating double time against me.

She's got her eye on everything, she cackles with laughter one minute and pulls the saddest face ever the next. Being with her cracks my heart right open with love. I fear for things that will hurt her, moments when she will bump up against sadness or loneliness or hurtful words dished out by mean women who take delight in pummeling her tender and precious heart.

I carry a lot for this girl.

It's an intense thing to be the mother of a daughter, here in this space of being a motherless daughter myself. I remind myself that everything she sees gets imprinted. I remind myself that I don't have to be a perfect mother, but one that she can rely on. I remind myself that the most important things I can give her are love, proof that I have her back, willingness to sit and talk and work things out, insight into the myriad of things coming her way. I remind myself to tell her that she's dynamite, because she is and nobody needs to hear that more than a small girl.

There is a little part of me that wants to run away from this responsibility. I'm not sure if it's the fear of disappointing her or screwing up or not being the woman that she needs me to be. I'm not sure if it's the desire to balance my one precious life with hers, to give her a legacy of a mother who didn't have to follow the conventional path of sustained sacrifice but found a middle ground.  I don't live the life my mother led, so how do I know how to do this and do it well?

Her small back curved to my side tonight as we read a book, talked and mostly just sat in each other's company. Little spine, hair a tangle down her back, eyes flashing. My heart is so full with love.