How I wish I could let you remain a kid! I wish I could stop worries from touching you….How lost you look sometimes, how desolate! I can see your effort, your wobbly smile, unshed tears- and there’s a pain, a helplessness in me, and a towering rage against whoever or whatever is making my lovely warm baby so vulnerable and sad.

Wasn’t it just a while ago that you were so carefree, playing outside on warm summer nights with all your friends? I can still smell that warm happiness as you skipped inside at last, so hungry you didn’t even want to wash up! When did my warbling, skinny, happy child grow up? Why do kids grow up? When man finally becomes immortal, will childhood last a few hundred years? And will the mothers then, too, lament their child’s growing up?

There are so many wonderful things written about the joys of motherhood. All true. But nothing prepares you for the vice around your heart--that squeezes you a hundred times, as your kid comes home with skinned knees, as you spot the loneliness in her eyes as a friend turns out to be unreliable, the hurt bent of her shoulders at a teacher’s unfair criticism, the worry creases on her forehead as she prepares for an exam, the sad surprise at the politics of real life…..

I remember every single person who hurt you. And I know I’ll never forget. I wonder at your sweetness, as you interact with some of them. So, you don’t consider them your enemies? Hmm… I am beginning to understand my mother’s suspicious or downright angry looks at some from my circle.

A daughter grows up faster and differently, until she becomes a mother. That’s when her life changes hugely—and she never recovers.