I always knew I wanted to be a mother. More than that, I always knew I wanted to have a daughter. As I grew up, I made constant notes about what I would teach her. When I was very small, I would commit to memory small events, moments I thought were essential for when I was the mummy. I ferreted them away, cataloging them so that when I was the mummy, I could pass them along, make sure that my daughter was a bit better prepared for life than I had been. By the time I was 10, I had a surprisingly specific mental list.
1. How to make cookies
2. How to sing (I thought my father was the author of all of James Taylor's songs)
3. How to make quicksand in a pail, and to provide assorted dolls to slowly sink into said bucket
4. How to tie shoelaces (I myself never learned properly until I was in high school)
5. How to sew
6. How to remove a splinter
7. How to play the recorder, piano and any other instrument that might fall into your hands
8. How to be brave when faced with such obstacles as gigantic, freshly-paved driveways
9. How to enjoy getting really dirty, even if it means there are bugs or thorns involved (my mother was an expert at this)
10. How to approach potentially terrifying wild or dead animals
11. How to build a snow fort
12. How to use the monkey bars
These weren't always the most relevant things in my life, but they were the things I either got the most pleasure from or saw as important on some cosmic level.
During the next five years, I became an avid reader of sci-fi and fantasy and began to live a vivid private life. I wrote constantly when I wasn't reading, and at the same time began to develop a wide circle of friends. The whole while, in some small part of my brain, I was collecting a to-do list of things that I would have to teach my daughter whenever she was old enough… whoever she might be.
13. How to stand in the middle of a thunderstorm and feel the electricity in your soul with your bare feet on the soil
14. How to cry until your chest is empty of the painful feelings you thought would never leave
15. How to wrap presents so that they look magical
16. How to paint
17. How to wear clothes that make you feel like yourself
18. How to tell your friends that you disagree with them
19. How to write what you really think and make it more eloquent than your own confused mind
20. How to deal with your crazy, curly hair
21. How to find music, artists and authors to devote your attention to
22. How to try every new food, within reason
23. How to always be willing to fall in love, despite how teenagers are complete idiots
Again, I never mastered some of those skills… but I had this gut feeling that someday I would, that someday I would be an adult and all of those things that were so difficult for me at 13 would just somehow be better. And unlike my own mother, I would find the way to teach some of these invaluable skills to my own daughter.