Wishes

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It’s my little girl’s 20^th birthday today, and I’m feeling reminiscent. Looking at pictures of when she was small, her bright-eyed, sweet and sassy, smart little self, her wonderful little-kid drawings and well put-together stories. Years of joys and stumbles, laughter and tears – all those things that make life both challenging and rich.

And I think about the world she’s grown up in. How different from my own. Today there’s reality tv and technology-for-all and instant this and that. A world where you can be immediately connected and yet feel terribly alone. A world grown smaller and more aware and in many ways more caring – but also a world with news cycles as fast as your next breath, riddled with violence and distrust coming at a much more steady pace than the world I knew – and all of this, I stop to think, is “normal” to her generation. I wonder; how that plays itself out.

It makes me want to show her a simpler time – but that was then, and this is her time, so I hold on to the faith that I’ve always had – that she’s going to be just fine. Better than fine. And as we’ve done through the ages, we’ll all keep trying to make to make the world a better place. I haven’t lost faith in that either.

I still have some wishes, though … and while written with my girl in mind, they could be for almost anyone, so I share:

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For my daughter

I hope you’ll always be able to look up and marvel at the bigness of a bright blue sky, and to wonder at the sheer magnitude of billions of twinkling stars in an unfathomable universe. I hope you’ll always be awed by the mystery and power of the sea; find magic in a sunrise; hear whispers of angels on the breeze. I hope you’ll know the majesty of a mountaintop and the magnificence of a flower. I hope you’ll know the joy of traveling inside pages that feed your spirit and take you to amazing places made with words – and I hope you’ll know the joy of traveling to faraway lands, to walk down wide boulevards and small, quirky streets and talk with people who speak other languages and gaze at ancient temples and grand cathedrals and giant forests and tiny fossils from the beginning of time and buy trinkets and hear music you’ve never heard before and return home with tales to tell and inspiration alive in your veins. I hope you’ll be touched by a painting and moved by a poem. I hope you’ll know the soothing stillness of peace, and invigorating, blood-pumping exhilaration. I hope you’ll see goodness in the hearts of others, and hold dear the beauty and honor of your own. I hope you’ll believe in your dreams, and have the courage to sing the songs your soul wants to sing. I hope you’ll experience miracles. I hope you’ll feel grateful for small things, and always stand up straight and tall. And I hope you’ll know laughter and love and friendship for all of your days.  Love, always and ever – Mom