A couple more stitches

Ania Trudi Rhine Burick.  

Pronounced AH nee ah.  

We call her Ani (AH nee).  

My little Ani bird. My daughter.  

For a long time, I did not think I wanted a daughter.  I thought it was pretty awesome to be surrounded by my three boys, each day thick with scooters, trucks, buzz lightyear briefs, and dazzling leaps off the couch in a superhero cape. A ruff and tumble, rag-tag little brood, hilarious, and sweet, and all boys. Boys felt safe and good and messy and okay.  So when the big 20 week ultrasound showed us that a wee girl was on her way, I completely freaked out, ugly-cry style. I was afraid.  Big time afraid.

Not afraid of braiding hair, and dolls, and all the stereotypical "girl" things, because I'll tell you, my daughter is the one in a superhero cape most of the day and I've seen her wrestle an IPad away from Vlad before. :)  That is not the issue.  I was afraid of having a daughter because I have spent the last seven years without a mother-daughter relationship.  So, I didn't know if I could go THERE.  I felt fumbly and nervous and unqualified for the job of "mother of a daughter" -- and I would talk about it awkwardly when people would ask if I was excited to finally have a girl.  I would nervously laugh and twitch and say, "but it's going to be so different" and people would ask how and I would mumble, "because, you know, er...." because all I knew is I didn't know how I was going to be HER mom.  I could be HIS mom to any of my boys, but HER mom seemed all together alien and different.

And that's what the last seven years has been like without my parents -- alien and different.  Still is.  I find myself still groping around for them like I've just been awakened at 2am by an alarm I can't seem to shut off. And all that is there is the void, the empty space where they are clearly not.  Ugh. Most of the time, I'm not sure how to put it into words, probably because it is still an open wound slowly being stitched together by so many hands in my life.  And..... I convinced myself that a daughter would simply undue my stitches. Stitches I have worked hard to put in place -- grief is work, people, and I thought a little girl would make me come unglued because it would place me back in a mother-daughter relationship I have learned to live without.  A relationship I no longer have so I don't know how to do that anymore.  And I didn't want to -- I didn't want to go there.  I didn't want to be ripped back apart by a daughter.

And yet, here she is.  :) My little bird. My daughter.  And, my sweet seamstress. Much like the Grinch who finds that after all his efforts, Christmas came just the same, this tiny girl came marching into my world and started pushing into corners of my heart. And while at times it has hurt a bit, it has also been quite delicious, and joyous, and freeing.  I find being her mom is exactly what I have needed in many ways.  It is balm to my broken heart.  It is a do-over.  It is everything I never knew I needed. For it is by walking INTO the relationship with my daughter that I am finding so much healing in the loss of my mother.  I am standing in what I lost, thrown back in time, to when my mother was here, standing in her shoes with a baby girl in my arms, which sometimes makes the tears come.  But yet, as I rock Ani to sleep, I am reminded of how my mom did that same thing every night with me.  Held me, rocked me, loved me, delighted in me. It's as though I have been consumed by this part of my life called "my mom is gone" so intensely that it has erased the part of my life when my mom was here. And little Ani is reminding me.  Reminding me that my mom cared for me, carried me, held me for almost 31 years.  She isn't only gone.  She was also very here.  Gosh, the profound healing that comes from that -- when it seems that all I have been able to see is the vast chasm of her loss -- the great missing piece -- now through this little cape wearing wonder, I am seeing all that I was given, all that I STILL have from my mom, like a treasure recovered from its hiding place.  Maybe having a daughter is helping me with those stitches after all.