One day....

My daughter is upstairs right now, attempting to make her bed.  She is super-frustrated, crying, telling us it doesn't work, she can't do it, why does everyone hate her?  We've shown her how to make her bed about 85 times.  We've only helped her make her bed about 273 times.  Now, we're at that point.  The point where she needs to sink or swim on her own.  If we don't she'll rely on us to do this for her for the rest of her life.  And not just making the beds, anything she deems too hard to learn.

Right now, this is my life.  That hard part of growing up where you have to learn to cut the ties for the good of bringing up self-sufficient independent people.  It's hard to do this, mostly because of the severe emotional outbursts from a pre-pubescent little girl that somehow has turned this into all of us disliking her.

Here's my little secret.  The thing that makes me able to walk away while she is tormented and crying.  The thing that I look forward to and even makes me smile.  

One day, she'll have a child.  

Oh.Y.E.S.

One day, she'll learn that she has to cut those ties to teach her child how to figure things out on her own.  One day she'll go through the emotional outbursts and drama.  One day she'll hear all about how everyone hates her child, all because she is making that child make their own bed - without help.

One day, she'll call me and vent about how hard it is.  She'll tell me how she can remember being in that emotional turmoil herself and how happy she is to be a grown up now.  She'll tell me how much it hurts her heart to have to be such a "Mean Mommy."

And I'll listen.  That will be my job, then, so many years from now.  While I sit in my own home, far away from the sounds of angry pre-pubescent children.  In a clean house, drinking coffee, or wine, or margaritas.  On my sun porch, or swing, because I won't have children's toys littering my yard.  And my laundry will be done because, I'll only have mine and my husband's to do.  And I'll listen.  And I'll do my best to console her.

And when I hang up the phone, I'll tell my husband all about her problems.  And we will have a good evil belly laugh! As we sip our drinks, on our quiet porch, watching a sunset, or enjoying a bonfire, we'll laugh, because once upon a time, we were in the same place.