STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• Comments
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

More All

• Words of Wisdom: You shall walk again
• The Bookworm: Who doesn’t love pets and babies?
• It’s All About The Media

Share and Enjoy [?]

How much simpler it is to have sons. We know that our sons will grow up and away from us the day they marry.

But our daughters will always stay close, right? Not any more, friends.

These days girls are just as bad as boys. They grow up and become firepersons, or CEOs, working women who go where the jobs are. And they are usually on the opposite side of the country from their mothers.

Of course, the cell phone can be the saving of us all. We can call our children at any time and anywhere — that is, if they don't have caller ID. The picture phone will make communicating even better for mothers who have to see their children with their own eyes to know they're all right.

Eventually, the day comes when your career-woman daughter makes the most important call since the moment she was born. "Mom," she announces over her cell phone, without a preamble, "I'm getting married."

That's music to a mother's ears. We live for the day when we can claim that we have a grandchild on the way. But first comes the most important question.

"What does he do for a living?"

"Mom, he's a brilliant geologist. We met while we were both on that dig in Africa last year."

Your daughter always had a thing for the exotic, but when she left to go to darkest Africa you knew somehow all those years you worked pushing the feminist line might have been a big mistake.

But the story only gets worse with the next question: "Where will you be living?"

That's when your daughter reveals that she's going to be living in Antartica while her geologist husband does two years' worth of research.

You choke up, and it's not from happiness at her choice of husband. The only response you can think of is, "Darling, you have no winter clothes. What will you wear?"

We bring our children into the world. Then when they get to be teenagers we pray silently for the time when they will go out into the world on their own. But all too often, once they move out, their plans don't coincide with yours. Their futures are based on the man or woman they marry.

You might have given them the most wonderful advice as they were growing into maturity. But when they said, "Sure, mom, I know," now you realize they didn't know anything at all.

They didn't know that your heart is fragile, and that you need your adult children to call you at least once a week come hell or high water.

They didn't know that you still stayed up nights wondering if they were taking care of their teeth. They didn't know that a mother is a mother all of her life.

Recently I visited my son, who is now older than I am. I mean he has gray in his hair, while I'm a Florida blonde. He lives a plane ride away. He has worries about his daughter and her schooling, while I just worry that he is worried about his daughter. He's talking about retirement down the line, while I'm thinking about how long I've got left and will I make it to his daughter's college graduation. We're on the same wavelength, somewhat.

I'm still his mom, but he isn't a little boy anymore. On the other hand, my daughter, the mother of my grandsons, is still my little girl.

She lives only two hours away by car. She doesn't act like a little girl, but more of a CEO-type. She's working-woman — bossy and self-assured — and doesn't seem worried about me until I get sick. Then she cries like the little girl I once knew.

And she's still my little girl when she wants time off from being a mother. So she's sent her boys to us for their summer vacation.

A daughter's a daughter all her life. Nice when it happens.