A Girl Like You

As a teenager my daughter claimed an aversion to alarm clocks.  Although perfectly capable of getting up on her own, she maintained that the raucous jolt of an alarm set a negative tone for her whole day.  She begged me to wake her personally.

Being a loving mother I obliged, devising a wake-up formula just for her.

She really would have fared better with an alarm clock.

Barging into her bedroom each morning, I’d launch into one of several inane monologues, which all shared a unifying theme.

“Girls like you,” I’d bellow, “you want to sleep late in the morning.  But your moms won’t let you.”  Or, “Girls like you, you think because you’re 16 you can get up when you want.  Forget that!”  And occasionally, “Girls like you, you wish your moms would go back where they came from.  But they’re not gonna.”

Why I fastened on the phrase “girls like you” is a mystery hardly worth probing.  Perhaps an old boyfriend’s frequent muttering of a song refrain that’s stuck in my head since the mid-eighties — “Girls like you always like my style” — was the genesis of the whole thing.

Whatever its source, the “girls like you” drill became entrenched, despite Natalie’s pleas for me to “Stop!” as she pulled the duvet over her head and rolled to face the wall.

For good measure I’d confirm that she wouldn’t go back to sleep when I returned downstairs. “Can I really trust you to get up?” (shortened over time to “Can you be trusted?”)  I’d wait by the door for her aggrieved but unfailing response: “Yes!  I can be trusted!”

Sounds silly, doesn’t it?  Yet it is one of my fondest memories, a pattern woven into the fabric of our lives together, as my daughter grew from a child into the young woman she is now, ready to start the next chapter in her life.

A week from now she’ll receive a Master’s degree in Marriage and Family Therapy from Northwestern University.  My pride in her as one of the top students in her class is matched only by my certainty that she will make a positive mark on the world.

Do you remember those mornings, too, Natalie?  Did you take comfort in a ritual that was ours alone?  Sometimes I allow myself to believe that it was all a front, that your alarm clock phobia was simply a reason to feel me close as you began each day, bracing for whatever challenges adolescence threw your way, strengthened by the knowledge that I was in your corner.

I hope that was part of it, that you recognized that my love for you will transcend whatever unfolds, and you know that wherever life takes you now, I will always be behind you.

If only the act of waking you each morning could truly have shielded you, magically softened the experiences I never wanted you to know, the losses and heartbreak I’d give anything to have removed from your path.  I wish your passage to adulthood had been gentler, untouched by divorce and the sudden deaths of friends, the loss of my parents when you hadn’t yet fully known them, the profound upheaval of the family your father and I had imagined for you before autism changed our lives.

If love was all it took, your life would have unfolded as effortlessly as I’d dreamed it would when you were a little girl, running barefoot down the sidewalk in a flowered dress on a summer evening, laughing with the unfettered delight that was uniquely yours.  I wish I could have captured that moment for you, and made it last forever.

But that wasn’t necessary, after all, for you to become the remarkable young woman you are today.  There is something magic in you that did the job on its own.

Do you remember when I started calling you my shining star?  That’s all right; I can’t remember, either.  It has simply always been so.  You are the daughter every parent hopes for: smart and kind, engaging and beautiful and naturally, genuinely good.  A leader who accepts responsibility even when you doubt your abilities, a friend who can be counted upon, a sibling to a boy who has been blessed beyond measure to have you in his corner.

Even as his disability altered your life so dramatically, as his needs so often eclipsed your own, you embraced him, loving him even when he didn’t express that love in return.  You’ve never stopped trying to reach him, to convey your devotion in a way he will understand.  And there is no doubt in my mind that he does understand.  The strength of your love broke through.

You’re probably reading this and crying “Stop!” as you did all those mornings when I jarred you annoyingly from sleep.  Don’t worry.  I’m not claiming that you excelled at everything.  Piano lessons, for example, come to mind.

What sets you apart is your willingness to try, to test yourself, your commitment to see things through without giving up.  You’ve gone forward even when you felt like quitting, and have inspired me to do the same.  You have forged the painful chapters of your life into something meaningful, something hopeful and positive and worthwhile.

Stop rolling your eyes; it’s not just your mom saying these things.  Remember what your teachers have told you for the last two years: you are incredibly smart, gifted and compassionate; you have what it takes to be an excellent, effective therapist; and most important of all: you have a good soul.

Looking back now, I realize I had it wrong all those mornings with my “girls like you” routine.  There is no one else in the world like you, beautiful Natalie.  A girl like you is one of a kind.

My aim as your mother has always been to give you and Daniel what each of you needs, in spite of your vastly different abilities.  I prayed that I would not let your brother’s disability cripple me, so that in turn I crippled you; that I would not hold you back through my own grief and self-doubt, that my longing to protect you as recompense for autism’s impact would not hinder your own confidence and initiative.

I don’t know if I succeeded.  I pray you will forgive me for all I’ve done wrong.  But it doesn’t really matter if I succeeded or not. Because you have.

Your success is demonstrated in the way you are living right now, as I write this, with details still uncertain, as you are waiting to see what lies just beyond your sight.  And waiting for what is yet to be revealed is one of the hardest things in the world to endure.

But you are doing it, my beautiful girl.  You keep moving forward, strong enough to confess your fears even as you take the next step, and the next after that.  You remind me of your grandfather, who knew the only way through it is through it, who put one foot in front of the other until he reached where he aimed to go.  He is smiling down on you now, sweet Natalie.  He is so incredibly proud of you, as am I.

Each day I marvel anew at the woman you have become, standing on the threshold of independence and all the wonder the world has in store.  I know you will never give up until you have found your true place, the place you are meant to be.  And you will make that place better than it was before.  This is one thing I know for sure.

You can be trusted.