Little Women. Smith Style.

Jenny, Grace, Amanda, and Christine

It is Christmas Eve and I am sitting in the living room at 9:26 a.m. looking out the window at a heavy fog.  I can't see across the street and Amy Grant is coming through the stereo reminding me that "it's the most wonderful time of the year".

I finally finished shopping on Friday.  I may pick up one or two more very little things to fill in some gaps.  But maybe not. I need to vacuum a little bit - and finish the laundry.  But my heart is filled with holiday spirit.

And I haven't felt it like this in a long time.

Yesterday was Amanda's 24th birthday and all of us sat around the dinner and did a little "remembering when" as well as looking ahead.

Amanda leaves for Australia a week from tomorrow to spend a semester working on her master's degree there.  She has evolved into a woman of such discipline and resolve.  She is an adventurer - fearless, with a joy for life and a grateful heart, blessed with kindness and wisdom.  And direction.  She is committed to healing all the wounds of the family - the kind we all collect along the way.  She is the wind and the sea.

Jenny graduates from college in May and plans to go to Spain (who knew).  She is supremely stylish and probably should have been born in the 1930's.  Her look and attitude suggest that highly charged time - she is at once glamorous and politically conscious.  She would have fit very nicely with Orson Wells and John Houseman and the wealth of idealistic artists of the time.  But she belongs here in this time too.  She is moody and funny and bright.  She is full of wit and bravura, and motivated by social justice.  She is the salt.

Christine has a year before graduating with a business degree.  Still undecided as to her next steps, she loves living in San Francisco and still is such a surprise to me.  Sweet and easy going, she is who she was the day she was born - completely lovable.  She shared the videos of her boyfriend who is an animator of stop action film.  She is private about most things but is creating a life for herself that is full of open doors.  Christine is intuitive and thoughtful - motivated my music; she still hears her own beat.  There is something mysterious and magical about her.  She is the light.

Grace, no longer a little girl, is talented and intense, smart and aspirational.  She is 10 years her sisters' junior -  but that gap is closing.  We no longer carry on two different simultaneous conversations - one adult and one youth - she holds her own in every way (she jumped into the political conversation last night like she was running for office!) She is still obsessed with boy bands and "who likes who" at school, but she has emerged from that cocoon and is fanning her new wings a bit (not quite ready to fly though, thankfully...)  She, at least for now,  is the color.

I was not a good mother.  I really wasn't.  I screamed too much.  I was distant.  In addition to having serious anxiety troubles that went too long without medication, I realize that I could not relate to a child's world.  At least not theirs.  I always expected them to be little adults - to think and act like people with life experience.  When they didn't, I was at a complete loss for what to do.  My only plan for keeping them safe and on the right track was to control as much as I could.  As you might imagine, this was neither popular nor effective.  Ultimately, I often felt like an outsider in my own house.  This was my own doing.

Or undoing.

But last night, sitting with my grown-up daughters, I felt an understanding and a kinship that was truly a gift.  I miss my "little" girls a great deal and often wish I could go back and relive some of those days, but there is warmth in a relationship with girls who have become women.  And in spite of everything, while they carry whatever battle scars received by living under our roof, they have become marvelous, amazing, gifted people.   It wasn't up to me after all.  And I say a little prayer of thanks for that.

And with Christmas music blaring - while all the girls are still sleeping off a night of late night movies on TV (till 3:00a.m.!!!), I am feeling very much like Louisa May Alcott's "Marmie" on Christmas Eve with her "Little Women".

Only they're Smiths.