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“It’s a funny thing about comin’ home. Looks the same, smells the same, feels the same. You’ll realize what’s changed is you.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

A couple of weeks ago, my 14-year-old was riding in the car next to me when she leaned over and asked me a question. It was one of those deep questions you don’t often get from teenagers who usually tune us out to turn up whatever they’re plugged into.

“Mom, before you had me, did you hope I would be a certain way? Like did you want me to grow up to be someone like you or someone who liked the same things you did?”

That question grabbed me by the messy, unwashed bun I was sporting and yanked me into the past of my own childhood. And I think her question is the question that a lot of us think about when we are kids, growing up with parents who are different than us. And maybe it’s more of, “Hey mom, am I good enough for you, as me?” I know I questioned my worth growing up. I never felt thin enough or pretty enough or quiet enough or enough, enough. I try very hard to teach my kids that they are worthy simply because they are them. I’ve never pictured my kids to be anything other than who they are.  I never worried about them being enough. If I’m being honest, I worried about me being enough for them.

I was petrified to be a mom.

I was almost 30 when I had my daughter, and there were all sorts of things that I feared could go wrong. And I brought up every single one of these concerns at the OB when I was pregnant with my daughter.

When I was seven months pregnant: “So….” I asked. “Can this baby get out of the baby bubble he/she lives in? Like go rogue?”

Doctor: “Like the Amniotic Sac? In the womb?”

And during this question, my husband, who apparently didn’t struggle with biology, sat in a chair in the corner, one hand over his face, shaking his head from side to side, mostly embarrassed but slightly amused.

Me: “Yeah, that.”

Doctor: “You’re serious?” She looks over at my husband, who held both hands out in front of him, palms up and shrugged his shoulders like that overused emoji we all love.

Me: “Ummm…..maybeeeeee? Depends on your answer.”

Doctor speaking slowly, like she is talking to a baby, “Noooo. Theee babyyyy cannot escape from the wombbbb. Like at all.”

Me: “Whew. That’s good to know. Can we talk about webbed feet next.”

I didn’t envision motherhood being me and my mini-me doing all the things I liked to do. I didn’t see my kids as carbon copies of me.

However, as they grow up, it’s cool that we all enjoy doing similar things. My son and husband love baseball (I do too!), and my daughter and I love Broadway. We all love to be out on a boat. But our similar interests are all just added bonuses that I never expected. I just wanted to make sure I didn’t screw anything up and that I kept them alive. After my daughter was born, I remember the day they told me I could leave the hospital, and I looked at the nurses with fearful eyes and exclaimed, “Like WITHOUT all of you?”

Thankfully my confidence in motherhood grew quickly. I stayed home with both of my kids, and we spent our days reading, playing and exploring their new lives. And mine, too. It was a beautiful, exhausting time that I wouldn’t trade for anything. I learned to trust my instincts and theirs. They are beautiful, imperfect, human-y, human beings and we are now in a season of life where they are teaching me all the things. And do I put some expectations on them? Sure, I think all parents do, consciously or subconsciously. But do I want them to be a certain person who fits my needs or standards? Nope. Never.

I answered my daughter honestly, in the car that day, “No, I didn’t have any preconceived notions about who you were going to be. I was really scared of physically having a baby. And I sucked at anatomy so there’s that. (And then told her the baby getting out of the sac story that I mentioned above) But what I do always hope for you and your brother is that you will always be who you want to be no matter what. And that’s going to mean that you may disappoint others to make sure you don’t disappoint yourself. Oh. And one more thing.”

My daughter looked at me, “Yeah?”

“After you leave and explore and create your own life, I hope you always come home. Actually, I hope you always want to come home.”

I took my daughter to NYC last weekend as an 8th grade graduation gift. I love New York. I grew up about an hour north of the city but spent a lot of time roaming those streets as a reporter and with friends and family. There’s an authenticity about New York that is unrivaled and as we saw all the sights and walked all the walks, we saw some unwanted sites, too. Like the guy who peed on the side of our hotel at 10 a.m. and the security guard who confronted him and called the police.
“Man, you can’t do that,” To which the urinator responded, “You do you and I’ll do me” and then walked off, zipping up his pants.

I shared a soft pretzel with a shirtless man who had been sleeping on the same bench in front of 30 Rock for two days. We took a cab, ate dinner in Bryant Park, saw Chicago and explored the Broadway Museum, experienced the Harry Potter experience, ate dinner at Ellen’s Stardust Diner, saw my mom, my 96-year-old Oma and my best friend and her family. We bought overpriced ice cream from a soft-serve ice cream truck parked on 51st Street and zigzagged our way through the chaos of Times Square. My daughter was homesick on the second day of our trip, intimidated by the unrelenting energy of the city. The streets of New York are intense, and she discovered that navigating NYC came with an unspoken set of rules that she hadn’t yet learned. Fourteen-year-olds live in an unchartered territory – too young for the nostalgia of their youth and not quite old enough to seek complete independence, they straddle the bravado of eventual independence and relying on the security of their parents.

Crossing a street in Times Square on a busy Sunday while standing shoulder-to-shoulder with hundreds of other people from all over the world, she grabbed onto my shirt which reminded of the days she held my hand as a small child while crossing the parking lot at the grocery store. She didn’t want to lose me.

I don’t want to lose her either.

She’s going into high school next year and the countdown to her ultimate independence has started. There are only so many more times I will tell her to clean up her room or turn off the lights or bring her water cups to the kitchen to be washed. She is starting to learn who she is and leaning into the person she wants to be.

I hope my kids always love themselves. I hope they leave our home and discover that love is always inside of them wherever they go. I hope they find happiness and adventure and learn to navigate pain and heartache. I hope they make a million mistakes and laugh and cry and hurt and heal and feel all of the things humans feel.

But most of all, I hope they come home.

And I hope they know, they can always come home.

June 3, 2023