My girl....

I just wanted to thank everyone who left kind comments regarding my last entry. I think anyone who has been a mother can relate to these feelings. It's a fact of life that if you are a mother, you will at some point feel this way. However, there is a flip side.

Betsy is, deep down, one of the most loving and caring people I know. Although she acts like a normal teen most of the time, quiet and reserved and holed up in her room,  she still loves her family. Even though she would never admit it publicly, she has a great time with us on occasion. There are evenings when she will sit with her sister and draw, or talk or laugh over old soundwaves they made years before. She will act goofy with me, singing in the car, or doing the "horse kick" to our favorite Christmas song "Sleigh Ride". When we go on vacation she is excited and enjoys herself. The teen angst and moodiness disappears, and the sunny girl comes out.

One of the things I am most proud of is her attitude with her grandfather. He is no longer the active, happy "Papa" she grew up with, but a very sick, bedridden, hard to understand patient. However, Betsy treats him just as she did before. She never visits without that kiss and hug hello and goodbye. She has watched him a few times so that my mom could get out and run to the store. A lot of teenagers would have been scared away, or saddened to the point of not wanting to be around their ill grandfather. But Betsy isn't like that. She loves him and treats him like the man she remembers....the man who used to take her to the "horsey park" every week with a picnic lunch; or spending an hour taking apart and writing down the correct way to play the "triangle golf tee game" so that only one was left over. Even though they no longer are able to eat together, she still reminices about how Papa was the only one who could make her coffee the way she liked it....since the age of two! LOL....she remembers this and still holds him close in her heart. I am so proud of her for that.

Betsy knows what she wants for her future. She realizes that these are such important years....and she tries hard. She is a true and loyal friend. There are so many things I could say about her....

I know that things won't stay the same forever. That wasn't the point of my previous entry. Life moves forward and our children grow into adults. And if I can pick myself up out of the pity hole I've sunken into, I will see that although things are changing, they still stay the same. I love my daughter. She loves me. Will we continue to sail through rough waters? Sure. But, and this is what I need to remember, we are navigating them together....