Something Sentimental

This is an essay I've been writing all year in my head and just recently put it on paper. It's interesting how perfect it is in your head, I guess that's why it took me so long to get the guts to write it down. I was right though, it isn't nearly as good as I imagined it. It started off as one of those college essays, you know, write about someone who has inspired you or had an influence on you. But over time it turned into something else. So, here it is. It's a very rough draft, so, just to make excuses.


Daughters Are Forever

This piece of paper would be rendered useless in the hands of a man; not a father, not a brother, not a son. The ties, the connections, the understanding, the things that are born out of a woman and the things that live in a daughter. The natural obligation between mother and daughter to support each other for life. I am the life of and she is the life, I was the dream and she dreamt of me, I will be the pride and she will be proud. She is my mother and I am her daughter.

When you're growing up, you don't see your mother as Tammy or Diane or Jennifer, you see her as mom; a perfect image not yet disturbed. When I first realized that my mother was an actual person, a person with faults, a person with fears, a person with doubts; an array of feelings conjured inside me. It hurt me, it confused me. However, the strangest feeling that I felt that day was equality and therefore power. My mother could be wrong, my mother could make mistakes, my mother was the same as me. The arrogance born with this revelation didn't give me the right to disrespect my mother, but it put me in the position to question her. This was the time, the moment, my mother wasn't only my mother, but she was my best friend too. I got to know her as a person, this wonderful person, weak and strong, brave and scared, right and wrong, silly, happy, funny. She is the best person I ever knew, know, or will know. It was through this discovery that I realized, finally, after all these years of having her as my friend, that I was right all along...she is perfect, perfect for me.

A son devotes his life to another woman, another family, but a daughter is where your heart is and where it always stays. My mom gave me her heart and I've kept it, I've lived it, and I'll always love it. It beats in my chest but it does not belong to me, it's hers and it will always be hers.

I wouldn't show her this piece of paper, I wouldn't read it out loud, I wouldn't sing it like a song, I don't have to. This is for the mothers that died, this is for the mothers that work all the time, this is for the mothers that never had a daughter, this is for the mothers that lost their chance to. Just in case you didn't know or never cared to find out, daughters are forever.