A Letter to My Daughter Who I Believe In

Dear Daughter,

When we bought our house I was too tired to use tools or do math, so I hired a baby-proofer to run through and make it less likely to give me heart attacks as you and your brother explored its sharp nooks and dangerous crannies.

Just to be extra safe, the cabinets under the kitchen sink where the cleaning supplies were kept were double-locked. There was this plastic butterfly-looking thing that attached the two knobs to each other, then each door had one of those child locks on it that only allows it to open about an inch before you had to press the lever in the special sweet spot to get it open. The baby-proofing guy told me that I could rest assured: neither you nor your brother would get in there.

Well, I told your brother just once not to open or even touch those doors, and he never even went near them again. Ever. You, on the other hand, saw those locks as me throwing down the gauntlet. I’m pretty sure your eye actually twinkled before I walked away after our little talk.

Only nine months old, you’d crawl over there, pull yourself to standing, deftly whip off the butterfly lock, slip your tiny sneaky hands inside the doors, press the levers, open them wide, and just perch there with an arm out like an itty bitty Vanna White next to all the poisonous cleaning supplies with a grin on your adorable, trouble-making face, silently watching me until I’d turn and see what you did.

You never once touched the stuff under the sink—you were too smart for that—but you worked out how to open the labyrinth of locks just because someone told you not to. You couldn’t resist if you even tried. You also got the added bonus of seeing me freak the freak out each time you did it (your favorite pastime).

Then came the bathroom incident.

You managed to lock yourself in the powder room when you were about two years old. Sure, there wasn’t much in there that you could get into trouble with, but, still: it’s a mom’s job to make sure her kid doesn’t lock herself in bathrooms. With one look I saw that this particular door was the only one in our home that had doorknobs that couldn’t be unlocked from the outside. Then I also realized that the window in there was locked. Your dad and I were apparently doing a stellar job on the home security front, but not so great when it came to things like rescuing small children from enclosed placed filled with toilet water and expensive Band-Aids.

I tried my darnedest to talk you through how to unlock the bathroom door, even using my Patient Voice. You made jiggling noises with the doorknob and said, “uhhhh-HUH” a lot, but I’m not sure whether you genuinely couldn’t figure it out or just wanted to continue the game of Let’s Make Mom Freak Out (again).

I had to get creative.

First I looked for a way to get the doorknob off. It didn’t budge; it was time to tear off some hinges. Off to the garage toolbox I went, gathering anything I could to rip those hinges apart. Luckily, you have a mom with She-Hulk strength and a stubborn streak. I got that door off its hinges and you out to the safety of the kitchen before I went into the bathroom and removed the entire doorknob system from that door in a strange mama bear passive aggressive act against companies that make suburban homes with bathroom doors that can’t be unlocked from the outside.

You were safe. I was sweaty. All was well.

It took about five years for me to realize the connection between these two stories as something more than amusing tales of a spunky kid and her always-kept-on-her-toes mom.

There will come many times in your life that it’s not too obvious how to open a door. Please know that I have faith that you can figure out how to do it on your own.

Sometimes that door will be covered in locks, so it will take small, strategic moves to work your way in.

Sometimes that door will have someone in the way of it opening. You’ll just have to work around them.

Sometimes that door simply won’t open the traditional way, requiring you to look for a non-traditional way in.

Before you were old enough to be self-aware—heck, before you were even old enough to stand on your own—you had the patience and smarts to figure out how to get exactly what you wanted. My hope for you is that you keep that self-assured focus, that drive, for every time you find yourself standing in front of something that’s in the way of what you want. Of what you need. Of what you deserve.

Because you deserve the world, kid.

As you get older, people will say things to you that aren’t nice. Hurt people hurt people–it’s unfair, but true. They will try to knock you down, get in your head, make you think you can’t get through that door. But you can, sweetie. I know it.

And if there ever comes a time that you just don’t have it in you, whether life gets you down or you simply need reassurance that you’re not alone out there, know that you can always call on me. I’ve broken down doors for you before, baby girl, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

Love,
Mom

Read also: HOLD THE DOOR: LESSONS FOR MY KIDS and HER FUTURE FAT THIGHS

 

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