ODE TO VALENTINA
I have no idea what the hell happened. You must be a prodigy because just yesterday afternoon I brought you home from the hospital and last night you graduated eighth grade. You were just wearing a diaper, and your umbilical cord was still drying … and last night I watched you sing, with professional precision, “La Preghiera” to a packed house and standing O. This has to be something for Ripley’s because you are a freak of nature … newborns are helpless and wrinkly, needy and seven pounds. I went to swaddle you last night and you were laying there in a white dress with a smokey eye and nude lip. It was weird, and I asked where the newborn was that I just brought home, and you said, “Mom, there is no newborn.” WHAT???? Who stole my baby? “Mom, that was 14 years ago.”
or not, is what we must cultivate, what we must love, for it is the key to our success, what drives us, what sets us apart from others. No one has the same talent, degree of talent or capability. It is recognizing what your child beholds that is the opening act, the overture, for the rest of their lives.
I realize, too, that eighth grade is not high school, or college, but it is the beginning of a new era, which will culminate in a new adult. This fleeting moment of 14 years, because it is just that, fleeting, a blip on life’s vital monitor that on December 23, 2002, I thought would last forever, was not mine to keep with me. It was all borrowed time. But, as I watched the seed I planted start to bloom with glorious petals, I am happy, proud, overjoyed at the gift I was given, the time only appropriated to me by God’s glorious will, and now hers to take wherever she wants.
When she came running to me last night in Church after the caps had turned their tassels and been thrown into the air, and those cheap crepey gowns were now wrinkled and uncared for, asking me if she could have a few friends over, (A few was like 15), I knew her childish innocence hadn’t evaporated just yet. I could see once again, the little girl in the Tinkerbell nightgown who just wanted to play pretend with her friends. I guess the Tinkerbell nightgown will save me on her wedding day.
Congratulations, my Valentina. Thank you for every moment of every day since December 23, 2002. Your dreams, your loves, are all tangible. Make them your success. I love you.
