Lucky enough to come between

For decades my role model was my mother. Now it’s my daughter. I’m just the woman who was lucky enough to come between the two.

– Anna Quindlen

I looked through my photographs and was surprised at how few I actually have of Grace and my mother together.  They have always had a special bond, from day one, when Mum and Hilary waited outside the delivery room while Grace was born and then met her immediately.  I didn’t know whether my baby was a boy or a girl, and I admit a very large part of me suspected the universe had an all-boy family in store for me, mostly because of how desperately I wanted to have a girl.  Well, 39 hours of brutal labor later, the first but not last time her will and mine went to war, Grace was born.

And minutes later, my mother was there.  My mother, who patiently withstood my senior year deconstruction of the mother-daughter bond, both in overarching generalities and in painful specifics.  My mother, whose red hair landed precisely and permanently on my head.  My mother, whose confidence and competence together make her a force of nature.  My mother, my role model.

My mother, my daughter, and I all have the same middle name.  We share an intuition about the world and an empath’s ability to read the emotions of others.  There are a million differences between us, of course, but the same blood – that which came from Marion, and Priscilla after her – beats in all of our veins.

  And once in a while, I am overwhelmed with awareness of how fortunate I am.  Of the lucky, lucky woman I am.