31

an ode to my daughter on her birthday

My daughter turns 31 today. How the hell do I have a 31 year old child? 29, I could handle. It’s still her twenties. She’s still fairly young. I’m still fairly young. 30 was hard to take, but doable, because she was new to her 30s. But 31? 31 is a full fledged grown ass adult. 31 is a lot of years.

If I blink it’s 30 years ago and I’m watching her take her first steps. We have a picture of the moment and in the background on the tv, CNN is showing the start of the Gulf war. It’s January 17, 1991. She’s just a baby.

Then she’s three and I realize she’s not progressing developmentally like the other kids her age and I have her tested and she ends up in a special ed pre-school at age four. On the first day of school, I drive behind the bus and there’s a decal on the bus that says “property of nassau county special education program” or something like that and I cry. It’s September, 1994. She’s just a little kid.

She’s five and in kindergarten in the public school and it’s a disaster. We transfer her in first grade to the special ed program. They want me to put her on Ritalin. The first day she takes it, she says “I don’t like this. I don’t feel like me.” I flush the Ritalin down the toilet and I am determined that she will get through this — we will get through this — without medication. It’s December 1996 and I cry a lot.

She’s seven and she’s happy. She loves to draw and play basketball and watch Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. She has friends and does well in school, even if it’s a struggle to keep her grades up. We get frustrated, but we’ve learned some coping skills. She keep plugging away and then she’s nine and in fourth grade and they decide that she can mainstream and go back to the regular school. It’s a rough year, a hard adjustment, but fifth grade comes and she has the most wonderful teacher. Mrs. Wirth gives Natalie everything she needs to succeed and prepare for middle school. It’s June 2000 and she’s a good, well adjusted kid.

She’s in middle school and she plays intramural basketball and makes a lot of friends. Those three years fly by. I realize that the older my kids get, the faster time goes. I panic at the thought of her being in high school and I wish I could just hold onto the years where she still wants to hang out with me, where she’s still sort of a kid, where I still have some control. But time doesn’t stop and it’s 2004 and she’s a teenager.

Then she’s in high school and she’s taking sign language classes and is elected historian for the drama the club and develops her love of photography. She struggles with schoolwork, she is diagnosed with OCD, she works her ass off and perseveres. There are little things, tiny moments that tear at the rope that binds us, signs that I need to let go. It’s ninth grade and I’m dropping her off at Warped Tour, sure that she is going to die of heatstroke while she’s there. She doesn’t. I let her go to parties, sure that she is going to meet up with a bad crowd and come home drunk or stoned. She doesn’t. I stop hovering over her while she does homework and projects because I was told to let her sink or swim on her own, it’s the only way to prepare her for the world. I’m sure it’s going to backfire. It doesn’t. It’s June, 2008 and she’s graduating high school and I’m feeling everything all at once. Pride, sadness, hope, fear.

She goes to the local community college. She does an internship at Disney World, where she gets to dress as Mickey and brighten the lives of little kids. She comes home from Florida and seems so much older than when she left. She’s finding herself, finding her way. The years pass. Time zooms by. She’s 20, 23, 25. She’s honing her photography skills. She becomes a yogi. She is spiritual in a holistic way. My parents call her a hippie. Her license plate reads PCE LVE. I am in awe of the way she navigates life, the way she navigates herself. She is grounded, she is confident. It is 2013 and she is a woman.

I don’t know where the rest of the years went. She lives with my sister for a while. She lives with her father. She moves back in with me and we seem to get in each other’s way all the time, which puts us on edge. She moves out and our relationship gets back on track. We go to concerts together. We get together just to talk. Her photography business is taking off; she has an amazing eye and people are recognizing that. She travels to Iceland by herself, up the coast of California by herself. She does things I can’t imagine doing. Despite inheriting my anxiety and depression, she has managed to grip life by the horns, she has been able to overcome and adapt and know she is capable of so much more than being grounded by her mental illnesses. I envy her. I am incredibly proud of who my daughter is and what she’s made of herself and her life. She overcame learning disabilities, some bad parenting on my part, the trauma of divorce and a broken home. She didn’t listen to people who told her not to follow her dreams. She followed them, caught up to them, and is living within them now.

She is 31 and I long for the days of Power Rangers and youth basketball at the same time I’m excited for her future. I honestly don’t know where the time went. I’m just glad to have experienced it all.

She’s going upstate today so she can sit and experience nature on her birthday. It’s going to snow and I worry about her because it is my job to worry about her, even though she’s an adult. That’s a string I’ll never let go. I will always worry about those little things - is she eating enough, did she remember to get her car inspected, is she careful driving in bad weather - because no matter how old your kids are, the worry is always there. It’s an intrinsic part of unconditional love.

It is February 15, 2021 and I wish my daughter the loveliest of birthdays.