On Speaking Terms

"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance." — Oscar Wilde

My youngest doesn't always do what would make me feel better.

For most of my life, that sentence would have started a small war. Quiet, internal, invisible to everyone else — but a war. I'd want her to choose differently, to do the thing that would settle something in me, and when she didn't, I'd feel it as a problem. A problem that was hers to fix.

These days I catch it. The old pull rises up — why won't she just — and somewhere in the middle of it, before I've said a word, a second voice arrives: oh. This is about me. She has to do what she has to do. My job is to honor that. And the feelings that come up when I don't get my way — those are mine to take care of. Not hers. Mine.

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