(I wrote and published the
following column a week after our daughter’s birth; right before Mother’s Day
1983. This month she celebrates her 29th birthday and her first
Mother’s Day as the mother of her own daughter. Now, she shares the special
Mother-Daughter bond not only with me but with her own daughter.)
Other mothers told me that
having a daughter is very special, an experience that I didn’t want to miss.
They kept telling me to “think pink” and hope for a girl.
But I already had a little boy so I
knew that boys are just as nice to have as little girls and that two little
boys would do just fine. My “mother’s intuition” told me that the second baby
would be another male and that their daddy would have two sons to follow him
around and imitate his every move.
I was wrong and I’m glad. On a
beautiful, sunny Sunday afternoon, May 1 (1983), a beautiful little girl was
born. And from the first moment that I held her, a special bond was formed
between mother and daughter.
When she
looks at me with her dark, round eyes, already so expressive, her dainty lips
forming a little “ooh” I feel that we are already communicating in a special
mother-daughter way.
As I feed
her, we have delightful chats about her future. We discuss whether she’ll wear
her hair long or short and I tell her that she has a mother with absolutely no
talent for fixing hair.
We talk
about clothes and I tell her how beautiful she’ll look in ruffles but that she
can wear jeans for keeping up with her very active big brother. I tell her
about the books she will enjoy when she gets a little older, books that her
mother once enjoyed. I tell her about Heidi and Little Women and
other classic tales.
And there
are some things that I tell Mary Catherine that are the same things that I told
her big brother, Peter, as he and I sat together in his nursery two years
before. I tell her that she must become the very best person she can; that she
must discover her own personal talents, develop them and use them in the best
way possible.

Yes, there
really is a special bond between a mother and daughter. Just like there is a
special bond between mother and son. Nothing can take away the special
relationship between Peter and me. But another dimension has opened in my life.
Whereas
Peter looks to his Daddy to learn how to act as a man, Mary Catherine will look
to me to learn how to act as a woman. It is an awesome responsibility being a
role model. It’s almost as frightening as it is exciting and challenging.
Already, I see Peter imitating his father in the way he stands and the phrases
he chooses.
Standing in
the kitchen the other day, watching the two of them together in the back yard,
I saw how eager Peter is to do what his dad does. As Allan scooped things up in
his shovel and tossed them over the fence, Peter, a few paces behind, scooped things
up in his little shovel and tried hard to toss them over the fence as well.
Like
father; like son; like mother; like daughter. Our little imitators are watching
and so the challenge is ours, to be the best person we can, not perfect, but as
good as we can be.
It might be
easier on a mother having two sons, but I think it will be more exciting and
challenging having both a son and a daughter. Mary Catherine and I have only
had a week together but the bond is already formed. The other mothers were
right – a daughter is very special indeed.
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