January
12, 2001
Five more days and my daughter will be
18. And every time i think of it, i feel that much
older. What was i doing
at that age?
i remember
my birthday only vaguely. my parents gave me a watch
and my older brother gave me a small charm that read
"18 and legal". And if i remember
correctly, i was treated to a drink of some sort. (i
hadn't yet developed a taste for beer which was their
beverage of choice)
Since my
hasty departure one night, when my father decided in a
drunken rage that both my mother and i should be
smacked for her illicit affair (unbeknown to me, she'd
hidden love letters in my dresser) i'd been living in a
rooming house and working in a restaurant. Both my
parents were still upset with me for not going back home
and my father had warned me that i'd starve. i think
that moment was the first time i got truly stubborn and
copped my 'oh yeah?' attitude - the first time that little
bit of steel in my personality revealed itself. i'd
calmly looked him in the eye and said; "no i
won't. And by my eighteenth birthday i'll have
$1,000.00 in the bank." A lot of money in
1975.
The day i
turned 18 i handed my father my bankbook. i had
$1,100.00 in the bank.
One month
later, i joined a government youth program and went to
Indonesia. And that's a whole other story. But
reflecting back now, i wish i'd had the maturity and the
self esteem i needed to keep that edge of steel
working. i think the paths i eventually walked might
not have been so bumpy.
Unlike me
at that age, my daughter seems to have a clearly defined
sense of self - with only minor insecurity blips to
overcome. Maturity should help with
that.
Like
me at that age, my daughter has a really nice figure and
*sigh* a flat tummy. Hee, hee - maturity should help
with that as well.
(okay
i'm slapping my fingers for not being nice!)
And
like me at that age, she's weighing some options on what
she wants to do with her life. i hope she takes her
time and makes her decisions carefully. 'Cause once
they are made, it takes a long time to undo them if they
weren't the right ones in the first place. That's a
life lesson i've learned the hard way.
Can i say
these things to her and have her understand? Or will
i just come off as interfering and preachy? i don't
know. But i think i need to try.
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