Daughters/Sisters

I talked in the Valentine week blog about the autobiography I wrote 26 years ago, and this week I want to tell you some stories I was reminded of about my three biological daughters. (I have awesome stepdaughters and awesome God-daughters but they were not in the autobiography.)

My first daughter is Ginny, better known to the public as Virginia Smith, author, speaker, and singer. Ginny was a real trip as a kid. I knew by the time she was eight that she was smarter than I was. She was shoveling snow one day and I watched her while thinking out loud about a decision I needed to make. She stopped, leaned on the shovel and said, “Mom, you’ve done what everyone else wanted you to do all your life – first Granddaddy and then Daddy. You need to decide what you really want and then do it!” What a concept…I was speechless and could only think “out of the mouths of babes!” That moment made up for previous years when she autographed the walls above her bed and her sister’s with crayons, poured a giant bottle of shampoo into a small bathrug, picked flowers out of the neighbor’s gardens and then rang their doorbells and sold them bouquets, and other memorable actions too numerous to list. Well, maybe just the one where she blackmailed her sister Susie for several years because she accidently put a dent in my car while playing with a rock. I discovered it when I told Ginny to do dishes one night and she said “Susie wants to do them” Susie burst into tears and said “I can’t stand it anymore!” And confessed to me about the dent that I had completely forgotten about. Ginny did all the dishes for a month. She came to me one day when she was thirteen and said, "Mom, don't you think it's time I did something about God?" And so we knelt together to pray and her new life began - the one that has blessed everyone that knows her.

Then there was Susie, the Beauty Pageant winner. A study in extremes, she would cry over children at school who got their feelings hurt and make a special effort to be kind to them. But when her baby sister came along, after she had been my baby for eight years, I overheard her telling the little one that she was ugly. I also peeked around the corner and saw her holding her foot over the new baby who was lying on the floor on a blanket. She never touched her sister but said “Squish” in a very threatening way. That evening at the supper table I mentioned to my oldest two children about an interesting article I read - how in adult therapy they often find out that terrible self images began in infancy when most people thought the babies were too young to understand what was being said. After dinner I again peeked around a corner and heard Susie talking to her baby sister in the crib. “Beth, you’re the prettiest baby in the world. Anybody who ever said you were ugly was just jealous.” As a teen, Susie had the special gift of having a boy seated on each side of her at church, two in the pew in front of her, two in the pew in back of her, and each boy thinking they were the one who was most special to her. She turned that gift into making everyone she meets feel that way - and knowing her heart, it's probably true.

Third was Beth – who at age three stared up at her grandfather with serious speculation and said “You got nickels? I got pockets.” Beth - who at age twelve saw the eggs in the catfish her stepfather was cleaning, and offered to sit on them so they would hatch. Once when she was around ten, Beth asked for sheets with butterflies on them. I said no, the plain white ones were within our price range. Shortly afterwards she had a slumber party and came to me in tears the next day. She showed me how someone had taken a pen and written her name all over the new sheet – and they’d misspelled her last name. I felt so sorry for her I bought her the butterfly sheets. When she was twenty-five she confessed that she’d written on the sheets herself, being sure to misspell her name so I’d believe someone else did it. Beth - who resigned a job managing a movie theatre rather than run a documentary film showing true death scenes just for the horror of it. Beth has been in professional and community theatre since she was eleven years old, acting, teaching, directing. She is a home-school liason for the education system. Beth - whose ambition is to work at Disneyworld, as tour guide on the Jungle Cruise. She says it's because there is a new audience every three minutes. But I suspect it's because it would give her new people in whose life to bring joy every three minutes.

Something happened between the sisters that I’d forgotten about until I was reading that autobiography. When Susie was in college she majored in Communications and we all expected her to become a movie or TV star. Then she was in a car wreck which literally ripped her face. At the time they were talking plastic surgery and teeth problems and we didn’t know that she would end up as lovely as ever. But during that time not only was Susie’s faith in Jesus triumphant, both of her sisters taught me the depths of love that resided in them. They also were both beautiful young women but did not plan a career based on their looks. Each said to me, independently of the other,“ Why couldn’t it have been me instead of Susie?” If that isn’t enough to make a mother’s heart swell with pride I don’t know what is. And though Susie could have gone on to have that star career, she chose a helping profession – loving and teaching Special Needs Children.

All three of my daughters are filled with love and integrity. They are all hard workers and hugely fun to be around. They all give of themselves, far beyond the average person, in order to enrich the lives of others. Knowing what a mess I was during their childhood, I am in awe at what they have allowed the only truly Good Parent to do with their lives.

Children are a gift from God. They are His reward. Psalm 127:3