Confessions of a Daughterless Mother

I have driven past this tree, walked and ran past this tree. I’ve ridden my bike and sat shot gun in the gator.  I’ve walked alone and I’ve walked with my boys past her. I’ve seen her out the window of a dozen different cars and I’ve noticed her a thousand different times. She didn’t always look this way.  When we first moved here--nearly nineteen years ago-- her branches were full of evergreen needles.  She was tall and unique, her branches reaching in scattered directions toward the world. She was not perfect, she was different.  She wasn’t always spent, covered in brown, dead needles with branches that have quit reaching for the sun.  She didn’t always have beautiful saplings growing up under her canopy, either.  Yesterday as Eric and I walked past the tree he said, “You could transplant some of those saplings now, they are strong and healthy enough.”  Now, I’m an emotional person by default. My heart is on my sleeve and there’s not much that hasn’t made me cry. I’m l

Years ago when I taught child birth education classes one of the last things I urged my young moms and dads to do was to be present in the process.  I told them I knew there were days that being pregnant frankly sucked - and that there were days the only positive or joyful thing about what was happening to their bodies, hormones, emotions, relationships was that in the end they would have a baby. A daughter. A son. A child of their own. I asked them to soak up all 40 weeks of being pregnant because in reality - this was the only time our babies are growing toward us. From the moment they are born the search for independence - at first looking to find the basic knowledge of moving their own fingers and toes at will, to learn to suckle and feed, to learn to sleep and soothe themselves - begins. Inevitably, my mommas would cry.  Sometimes the dads, too.  So excited they were to bring this baby into the world and here I was casting a light of bittersweet nostalgia on the child who ha