Decade

My firstborn is ten today.

I remember turning 10 myself, remember feeling melancholy over leaving behind the simplicity of being a single number forever. My childhood, I knew, was ending soon.

How do you feel about being ten? I asked The Girl this morning.

"I feel exactly the same!" she said, laughing, the sunlight pouring in through the windows and turning her hair to gold. If she knows that childhood soon will end, she carries it lightly.

Before I had kids, I had ideas about what sort of children I wanted. I wanted them to be JUST like me, but like improved versions of me, able to use my talents and smarts in ways that I'm too lazy to do. I wanted them to look like me, with my dark eyes and dark hair and sharp face, but to have it transformed into beauty. I wanted them to have my personality but not to be made miserable by it. I wanted them, in short, to live my life for me, to carry the burden of being me with better grace than I ever have.

Mercifully, my oldest child is nothing like me. She is a gentle child and not fearful. Her heart is light and tender and strong. She does not cry easily, does not bear grudges and carries pain like a little warrior. Her life is her own and she is more nature's child than mine, with her hair like wheat, her eyes like a calm green sea, herself as fragile and resilient as a wildflower. And turning ten just means cake and presents and her best friend over for the weekend.

Have you had a happy childhood? I fretted at her last night, and she made a face at me. "What a funny question," she said, "I am having a happy childhood. I am right in the middle of it. Yes." And then she said, laughing "Stop worrying, mom!"

Who are you? I used to think, amused, during our days together. And now I know. Ten years has brought me many things - the grace to be happier with my own self, the knowledge that I am stronger than I thought. Ten years has brought me this child, standing in the middle of her childhood, surrounded by her birthday and the uncomplicated happy thought of presents and cake to come. And ten years ago this very morning, she was placed in my arms and I stared at her uncomprehending, unable to know that ten years later she would be, quite simply, the joy of my heart, my little glowing girl.

Happy birthday, sweet child.