Grace

Dear Grace,

Today you’re nineteen.  It’s not an exaggeration to say that I love being your mother more every year.  This year was full of transition and more than a few challenges.  You weathered a strange senior year with a lot of covid restrictions (“jail” is an analogy I heard a lot).  You spent several days quarantining alone an hour away from home when you had covid and it was during those days that you hear from most of the colleges you’d applied to.  You showed grit I’ve never seen before and it made me so very proud.

Over the summer you worked two jobs and it was probably more than you’d have chosen but you did it.  Then, the start of college was tough when you were randomly placed on the secondary campus which is a 15 minute drive away.  But you figured out a way to advocate for yourself and after Dad found a senior housing dean you took it upon yourself to meet with him and to make your case.  You got moved to the main campus.

It is a sheer joy to watch you fly, Grace.  You have maturity and poise and a very good sense of what matters.  You call your grandmothers every couple of weeks.  You write thank you notes. You look people in the eye. You are organized and hard working and your executive function is off the charts.  You’re still figuring out what your one guiding passion is and our conversations about this remind me of mine with my father when I was your age.

My amazing Grace – thank you for making me a mother all those years ago.  I adore you and I couldn’t possibly be prouder of you.  I’m so glad I can spend today with you.

Happy 19, GBP.

My Google Photo memories are full of xc  photos in the autumn.  Grace ran starting in 6th grade and varsity starting in 8th.  I have a lot of photographs and I miss watching cross-country meets.  I maintain it is one of the purest of the sports.  I always loved that it was also one in which you cannot buy an advantage.  Unlike so many other sports, there are precious few clubs for middle and high schoolers.  Being from privilege doesn’t help you at all.  You lace up.  And you go.  All you have is your mettle, your commitment, your legs, and your heart.

It’s also a sport full of metaphors.  I wrote about these metaphors over the years: how to handle the races that don’t go according to plan, the importance of who you run with and pace yourself by, managing the anxiety before a race and learning that the worst part is the minutes before the gun goes off, and the grit required to just keep going, no matter what.

And cross-country also offers my favorite parenting metaphor: you start out up close.  You cheer from right beside your child as they take off.  You watch closely.  Then they go into the woods and you lose sight of them.  And you keep cheering.  You trust they’ll emerge from the woods.  And you’re still there, cheering, watching, waiting.

I don’t know a better analogy for parenting a teenager, I really don’t.

Google reminded me of this photo today, and I feel nostalgic for the running days.  And grateful that I was there for so many of them.

Oh, Grace.  Next week we drive to Washington to drop you at college.  In some ways, you “left” already, so I am not in the same skinless-crying-unable-to-cope place I was 4 years ago.  But this is still a transition, and an almighty one.

My father wrote me a long letter when I started college.  I treasure it.  He also drove me there, and I will never forget weeping in the parking lot of my dorm and begging him not to leave me.

Rather than a long missive of paragraphs, I have a few bullet point reminders of what I hope you will remember next year and beyond.  I am sure most of this will go in one ear and out the other, but I mean it, and I hope some of it floats to your mind now and then.

• Get enough sleep.  I know, I know, I’m SUCH A MOM.  But it’s true.
• Also enough water and exercise, and some vegetables now and then.  I know you know this stuff matters.
• Stop drinking before you think you should.  There is so much to live and experience, and you don’t want to waste it either blacked out or hung over.  I’m not saying don’t drink.  I’m just saying learn when to stop and it’s probably before you think you should.
• Write stuff down.  Take pictures.  The latter I know you’ll do.  The former, I suggest you try to.  Some memories and moments can’t be captured in photos or videos.
• Call and text me.  Pretty sure you will, but I am always interested in what’s going on.
• Figure out what calms you down – a walk, a run, a book (that’s mine), a nap, some deep breathing.  Use as required.
• Proceed with caution in matters of the heart.  It’s easy to get hurt.  On the other hand, trusting and loving is the path to a full life. But go slow.  Be careful.
• Stay open to the boys who aren’t immediately obvious as the cool ones.  Remember what Poppy always told me: “the nerds shall inherit the earth.”
• Try to stay flexible.  I know this trait since you got it from me, but so much of what I see making you sad has to do with when things don’t go according to plan.  Try to remember things can be not what you expected and still great.  Sometimes plans change.  It’s not always bad.
• Look after each other.  Have a wingwoman when you go out and don’t leave without each other.  This is important.
• Live it.  I know you know I love that Blake Shelton song, and I also know you know the tattoo I might get somedays says “be here now.”  These years fly by.  Try to be there.

Time has flown.

You are launched.

I am so proud of you I can’t stand it.

I adore you.

On Saturday night we celebrated Grace’s high school graduation.  This is the toast I gave.

When you were a small child, I used to talk about your being “smart and brave.” My dear friend Gloria, Whit’s godmother, reminded me of this a few years ago when she had a daughter. I’ve thought a lot about that exhortation over the years and I don’t know that it really captures my goals. The smart, I believe, is innate and therefore less a goal than something we just have and deal with. The brave is not inconsequential. The brave is the key.

Bravery is correlated with grit and determination and resilience and hard work.  All the buzz words of parenting these days, all things I hope for you and, more germane to this toast, all things I observe in you.  Bravery is about looking forward with optimism, about believing that the world will respond to a positive
attitude and hard work. It’s about assuming the best of people. It’s about giving things a second try, which you wrote your college essay about.

The story that I think encapsulates you the best over the last few years is one I think you’re tired of, but I’m going to tell it anyway. It was cross-country New Englands of your sophomore year at Deerfield. You guys were the returning champions, having won the year before. There was a lot of attention on your team and a heavy load of expectation. A couple of hundred meters after the start, another runner accidentally flat-tired you and your shoe came off. You stumbled, fixed your shoe, and got back up again. You were in dead last of the competitive group and you never one time, as far as I can tell, thought about quitting. Instead you gritted your teeth and took over a lot of runners over the next 3 miles. It wasn’t the race or finish you wanted, but I believe it showed who you are.

You’re made of grit, my girl, brave through and through, and performances like that one show you a lot more about how to build a life than when things go smoothly. The road ahead is dazzling, and I can’t wait to watch you walk – or run – it. But I know there will be other stumbles and bumps, and I also know you’ll greet them with your characteristic determination, good humor, and hard work.  I’ve seen you do it before – your Deerfield years were replete with opportunities to show your grit, from losing both of you grandfathers in your first 2 months there to the receiving of all your college decisions while alone in a house with covid.  And a million episodes in between.  This is how you make a path, how you greet the day, how you move forward, how you surround yourself with joy.

It is literally impossible for me to be prouder of you. Thank you for making me a mother. You’ll always be the person who did that, my Amazing Grace who arrived after 40+ hours of labor in the driving downpour. It was the last time, as I’ve often joked, that you were late.  I have loved you every day since then, and I will every day to come.

Congratulations.