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I am watching my daughter play in the front yard. She has her back to me, but I know that she is talking to herself. She is animated, carrying on a conversation with her imaginary friend. When I ask her later, she tells me that her shadow is her best friend. I am watching her when I realize why it is that we have developed such a close bond. She is me. So much of me it is scary. I watch her play and I realize that I am watching myself at her age. I think of how much life she has before her and how much I want for her to do and see, all the things that I didn’t. I wonder if my mother felt the same way as I was growing up. She recently told me a story of when she was about 15, going to see the movie “Lillie” over and over again. She was drawn to the story of a young French girl, searching for love, discovering a life of her own. I happened to see most of the movie a few days later and watched with great interest. What was it that drew my mother’s fascination? Certainly the city of Paris was appealing, so different from her upbringing, and mine. A young girl, just on the brink of her adult life, with an endless variety of choices before her. Was it this that intrigued my mom? Did she sit in the theatre and wonder what her life would be like? Did she imagine herself walking the streets of Paris searching for the meaning of life? Did she just want to be in Paris and fall in love with the “wrong kind of man?” When I was 15 I wanted that. I wanted to be somewhere else, in a strange land, meeting strange, but interesting people. Perhaps, being the “stranger” would make me somehow more appealing. Ultimately that is the draw: to be more appealing, to be different in an interesting way.

I watch my daughter play and I wonder if she will see more of the world than my mother or me. New York was the most interesting place my mother ever saw. I cannot even claim this. I find that I am almost pushing the idea of spending a year in Paris onto my 6-year-old daughter. “Wouldn’t it be fun to see Paris? If you want to learn about art, the place you must go is Paris. French boys are really cute.” Am I turning into one of those mothers who live thru their children? In a way, yes. As much as my mother talked up the idea of “seeing what the options are” she never pushed me far from home. As her life unfolded and became set in stone, did she feel regret? My sister did the “Europe thing.” I recall my mother’s pure joy when a postcard would arrive from Austria or France. At the time I was 11 and remember thinking, “I can’t wait until it is my turn.” But I didn’t take my turn. Not that I didn’t have the chance, I simply didn’t take my turn. I made different choices.

What choices will my daughter make? Will I let her make her own choices? How much like me is she? Is she different enough to take advantage of all that is offered to her? Can I instill in her the confidence to be brave and try something new? Just how much like me is she? Thankfully there is lots of time ahead of her. Time to grow into her own person. A woman different from me.