Frustrated

Ron and I always wanted a daughter, since before we decided we were going to have kids. We could see as far as having a little girl and a couple of cats. And here we are, with a daughter, a son, and four personality-laden felines sharing our living space. Usually, it's a dream come true, it really is. And then there are those days I have to remind myself that I chose this....

I got frustrated with my daughter this morning. She's fifteen and a half. (For some of you, this is enough explanation.) It had to do with the fact that she has eleven pairs of clean jeans in her drawer (at the end of a week!) and none of them are, evidently, wearable. I dropped her off at school and began trying to make myself feel less irritable about the money we've spent on clothes she won't wear. And I turned to this poem:

Poem for a Daughter, by Anne Stevenson

"I think I'm going to have it,"
I said, joking between pains.
The midwife rolled competent
sleeves over corpulent milky arms.
"Dear, you never have it,
we deliver it."
A judgement years proved true.
Certainly I've never had you

as you still have me, Caroline.
Why does a mother need a daughter?
Heart's needle, hostage to fortune,
freedom's end. Yet nothing's more perfect
than that bleating, razor-shaped cry
that delivers a mother to her baby.
The bloodcord snaps that held
their sphere together. The child,
tiny and alone, creates the mother.

A woman's life is her own
until it is taken away
by a first particular cry.
Then she is not alone
but part of the premises
of everything there is:
a time, a tribe, a war.
When we belong to the world
we become what we are.

Of course, I'd say that lots of us belong to the world without having to be yanked into it by the cry of a newborn (yes, I'm thinking of you, Ashley). But I like the idea that the fierceness of a mother guarding her child can be a force for good when it's turned outward into the world. On these days when my fierceness is turning towards the child herself, I need to take a step back, into the world, and get some perspective.

Also a step back into memory always works well for me. I remember when my daughter was almost two and an adult asked her why she'd done something and she said, quite clearly: "because I am frus-ter-a-ted." Yeah, that was a proud day for me. It was almost as good as the time all the little girls at preschool were asked what they wanted to do when they grew up, and most of them said "be a mommy" except for my girl, who said "become a paleontologist." The kid has always had an astounding vocabulary.

Oh, and I threw those eleven pairs of jeans into the box for Goodwill. That worked off some of my frustration. What are you frustrated about today?