Dear Caroline,
Today you turn eleven. Seriously. Eleven years old.
And get this. You’re starting junior high in three weeks. You’re going to have a locker and change classes and be in the band like a real live big kid.
Maybe someday I’ll quit wondering how it’s all managing to go by so fast, but probably not.
But here’s the thing. I adore you at this new stage somewhere between childhood and becoming a teenager.
It’s not that I haven’t loved every single minute of being your mom because I can’t even explain all the ways you have made life brighter for the last eleven years, but seeing the transformation in you over the past year has been an indescribable gift.
Your questions have changed. You’ve transitioned from “What happen, Mama?” and “Why it darken outside, Daddy?” to “How do I know if someone is a real friend?” and “How do you know when God is telling you something?” These questions require significantly more thought and sometimes more mental capacity than I feel capable of at the end of a long day full of math homework and soccer carpool and making dinner appear from nothing but an onion and a pound of ground beef. But I love that you ask. I love that right now your Daddy and I are still the authority on most subjects as far as you’re concerned. I realize this probably won’t always be the case so I intend to impart as much wisdom as I can while you’re still paying such close attention.
Even though I wasn’t able to talk you out of getting bangs this year. Like most women before you, you began growing them back out the very next day.
Last night we went to go get manicures and pedicures and as we were leaving you said, “Thanks, Mama. I know this hasn’t been the easiest summer for us, but I love my fingernails.” And you’re right. It hasn’t been the easiest summer. These last couple of months have been filled with lots of growing pains and new steps of independence that you weren’t quite ready to take, but I watched you take them anyway. You will never know until you’re a mom yourself how hard it was for me to not drive straight to Aggie soccer camp and pick you up when I knew you weren’t having a good time. All I wanted was to have you back in my arms and under my roof so I could make it all better.
But I knew that the bigger lesson was for you to know you could survive it. Yes, it wasn’t your favorite and, no, I don’t think you’re going back next year, but you stuck it out and even just two weeks later you’ve admitted you knew it was what you needed to do. And I think the hardest part for me was knowing this was just the first of many times when I’d have to fight my desire to control a situation and run to your rescue versus letting you figure it out for yourself, to learn that it’s usually the tough situations that teach us the most about ourselves.
The other day we were talking about a few things and I told you that you were getting to an age where you were going to have to do the right thing because you knew it was the right thing to do and that Daddy and I won’t always be able to make choices for you. You took that in for a minute and said, “Yes, but it’s really important to me that I always please you and Daddy.”
I’m not going to lie. I’m going to run with that as long as I can.
But these are the years when you begin to make a series of choices. Everything from what sport to play to how hard you choose to apply yourself in school to the friends you will let into your life. These are the little things that will become the big things and we will encourage you every single step of the way to follow your heart and be true to the unique person God has made you to be and to strive to be the best at whatever you choose to do. Yet, ultimately, we’re heading into the years where the decisions are yours to make and the consequences are yours to live with, good or bad.
Here’s what I can promise you. Daddy and I will be here to cheer you on and pick you up and love you unconditionally through the best and the worst of all of it.
One last thing and then I’ll wipe my tears and quit being a sap. You are so funny. I can’t tell you how many times you bust out with something at the dinner table that makes us laugh until we cry and ask each other later, “How does she know to be so dang funny?” We are a family that puts a premium on humor, probably more than is appropriate at times, and you are proof that you can’t fight DNA.
Eleven years ago today you showed up two weeks before your due date, perfectly capturing Shakespeare’s words “Though she be but little, she is fierce.” And that has basically summed you up every day since then.
You will always be the light of our lives. If I could choose one kid out of all the kids in the world, I’d choose you over and over again. You make us laugh, you challenge us, you teach us, and, most of all, you make us love you more every day.
Happy Birthday, sweet girl. Eleven is going to be awesome.
Love,
Mama