My Daughter Is Her Own Person

Photo by Daria Obymaha on Pexels

In yesterday’s post, I wrote about how graduation celebrations and packing for camp marked the passage of time for me. As I get my daughter ready to spend a month away from me and her dad, I’m taking time to reflect on who she has become as a person and to remember my own time developing as an individual different from my own mother.

Over the years, I have tried to get my daughter excited about the hobbies, passions, movies, and books that have excited me. Finally, I thought, here was someone with my blood who would obviously get everything that I got and like everything that I liked.

That notion very quickly popped when I tried to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series with her. She wanted nothing to do with this girl-power frilly-and-gothic all at the same time 90s television experience. Granted, that first season was pretty mediocre, especially the first three episodes, but I would never get to share that masterclass in showing not telling, “Hush” (there is only about 17 minutes of dialogue in a 44-minute episode) or the searing pain told via true-to-life writing and powerful acting in “The Body.”

And, read the books that I had loved as a kid growing up, like The Sword of Shannara series, The Hobbit, or Stephen King’s The Shining, are you kidding me? Why wasn’t I reading graphic novels like The Heartstopper series or watching “Modern Family”?

Of course, I then thought back to all those times when I tried to get my mom to watch all of the foreign films I became so fond of in college. One year, I actually managed to drag her to a theater to watch the movie, “Shadowlands” with me. She promptly fell asleep, and her snores were so loud that I poked her until she woke up. She proceeded to watch the end of the movie and cried at the storyline even though she had slept through most of it (it was indeed a very, very sad movie).

But, just like me, my daughter is her own person. She is funny, kind, and outgoing. She’s never more energized than when she is in a room full of friends. And even though I couldn’t ever imagine being as comfortable as she is making friends with people that she has just met, I love that this is a guiding principle in her life -- to make everyone around her laugh with joy.

We do have some things in common. She has gotten over when I traumatized her by showing her the movie Coraline when she was too young (those creepy, creepy button eyes will scare you every time!), and now she watches every horror movie she can with her friends. She and I both love to belly laugh, and we both love spending our summers up at the lake and capturing memories on our cameras.

We are both so different and still we are mother and daughter, and that bond is strong and makes me beyond happy. I can’t wait to see her continue to develop into her own amazing self.