Friday, December 19, 2008

For Juniper

Little girls are precious gifts, wrapped in love serene.
Their dresses tied with sashes and futures tied with dreams.


I decided today, what better way to really start this thing, this most time consuming thing that will be ignored way too often, I am sure. What better way than gushing about my daughter? Nothing. There is nothing better.

It's evident to me now, more so than ever before, that it is our birth right, as girls and eventually as women, to be a muse. It is a blessing (and often a curse) woven into the very threads of our feminine tapestry from conception.

Looking at my daughter is a humbling affair. She isn't just cute. Of course she is cute, precious, adorable, angelic. But calling her those names, those elementary, plebeian names makes me feel beggarly in their wake.
Beyond that she is beautiful. She is heart-breakingly, breathtakingly, mind-blowingly, tragically beautiful.

She possesses an all-encompassing beauty. That's right. Even her gas escapes in a song.
When she cries it is a lyre, and when she coo's, it must be from a harp.

Every slender finger, every pale lash, every soft fold of her tiny vulva. It is all impossibly perfect.

I have to qualify that I have two beautiful sons. Two amazingly spirited, funny and gorgeous sons.

I love them each with as much vigor as the next, but it is a different sort, the love for my sons and the love for my girl.
My sons are the sunshine. My daughter is the moon.

They will never have the certain softness that a girl has. That look Botticelli captured perfectly. There is always going to be something slightly harsher on a boy, unyielding.
They may be chubby babies with squishy thighs and bottoms, and cute kids with round plummy cheeks, and tall almost men with scruffy hair and pink pubescent lips learning to enjoy kissing...
But they will never have the softness that comes with being female.

It really has taken me by surprise. This awe I've found with being the mother to a girl. Mother to a daughter. I would never have thought it would be quite this powerful. And maybe it's not the norm. Maybe just after 7 and 2.5 years of being the mother to boys, I was all but lost in a sea of testosterone. So this sudden surge of estrogen in the house was shockingly unexpected.

It is welcome, of course. But I don't expect that the sharp inhale of air and the pricking in my eyes that occurs when I see her glorious naked little body before me will cease anytime soon.

Francesca Lia Block got it right when she wrote "In every girl is a Goddess"...


Smitten, every one of us.


7 comments:

Mama Red said...

What a very lovely tribute to your perfect little girl.

Unknown said...

Soooo sweet!

You are a fabulous writer - you really have a beautiful gift with words! I want more!!!

Samantha said...

This is beautiful!!

Debra said...

intrinsic......in beauty....you left a tear in my eye and a very full heart...thats my girl...i love you and am very proud ...juniper has some shoes to fill xxx

)sturgeonation( said...

i concur

Anonymous said...

Beautiful writing for a beautiful little girl from a beautiful momma! Gosh I'm redundant!

I'm thrilled you are blogging! :D

Tammy said...

Oh I have follow this link from Deb and immediately know who you are your words of love for your daughter echoed in the words your mother uses ( though not quite so poetically )when speaking of you and her much loved Grandchildren on distant shores.
Nice to see you blogging and I will be by again to peek into your life see what you have had to say.
You write beautifully.