This is 11

I wrote a poem in 1993 entitled, "she was only 11". It was a poem about my father sexually molesting me as a young girl and and my mother's failure to protect me. It was poem of violence, trauma and abandonment. It was a poem that tried to make sense of what had happened to me as a girl decades before. 32 years later, 11 visits again.

Today, my 11 year old daughter and I were trying to make it back to Illinois after an action packed weekend of fun at a family wedding. Our return flight had been cancelled yesterday but today we made it to our connecting flight so there was hope. She was anxious because she wanted to return to make it to her friend's birthday party. It was the first one she would be attending in middle school with both girl and boy guests.  She wanted to look special for the occasion so she had on the dress she wore to the wedding but not too special so she edged it up a bit with sneakers. 

Our flight had been delayed twice so I left her side at the airport briefly to grab us some lunch. I got her gut wrenching tearful phone call as I waited for her sub to be prepared. Our flight had been cancelled for a second time and now she was going to miss the party. To make matters worse, we are stuck in a random city for the night. 

She was hysterical on the phone. I could hear an older black woman asking her if she was OK in the background. I told her I was on my way and left her sub at the restaurant. I walked as fast as I could back to our gate as I tried to calm her down. She was inconsolable and at moments accused me of not helping matters. (Side bar: No matter how bad I felt about the situation, I was not having that kind guilt tripping and quickly checked her on that behavior). I'm her mother, not a punching bag! Still, I hung on the line until I reached her and then held her in my arms when I got to her. I was weary. I knew we needed to get to the ticket counter if there was any possibility of us getting to Chicago or a nearby airport today but she was a wreck. She didn't care who was watching or what needed to happen. She needed to fall out for a bit. So we sat, she cried and I held her. When I wasn't enough, she called her dad and cried to him. 

Finally after what seemed like an eternity, I told her we needed to get new tickets. We were pretty much the last ones to get into the ticket reissue line. She wiped tears the whole time we waited. I held my bladder and my emotions. I got our tickets and then she collapsed again as the full reality set in that we were not getting home until tomorrow. 

She kept asking me to fix it and saying she just wanted to go home and to see her dad who had been traveling for the past 10 days. I reminded her that I cannot simply fix things I have no control over. She swallowed that pill bitterly. 

She eventually calmed down and even began to smile and laugh bit. We settled into a hotel and had lunch and played a few rounds of checkers. She had another crying episode and I, at my wit's end, decided that she had shed enough tears on the matter of a "missed birthday party". I reminded her that this is a small bump in grander scheme of her life and there were girls her age that were dealing with real shit. Rape. Abuse. Homelessness. Poverty. War. Dangerous unaccompanied border crossings without their parents. Yes, I went there. Because the girl was working my nerves and seriously, it was just a damned party! 

She finally cried herself out and fell asleep. I am lying in the bed across from her looking at her beautiful perfection and shaking my head at the intensity of her emotional expressivity. Yes, it's going to be a long adolescence but I am happy to be on this journey with her. 

I remind myself that she is ONLY 11 and suddenly I am realizing that our 11th years are significantly different.  My daughter  is dealing with petty disappointments that are age appropriate. Not sexual assault as I did at her age. My daughter asks for her father when she is in pain and he comforts her and supports me.  My father was the primary source of my pain. I am listening to my daughter and assuring her that she is capable of surviving her pain. Although my mother did assist me with aborting my father's baby she did not respond to my terror or assure my protection because she stayed in relationship with him. My daughter is empowered and embraces her budding adolescent sexuality when she decides to wear a dress to the party but I had mine taken from me violently. My daughter is allowed to express her feelings openly and publicly yet I was silenced by fear for decades. At age 11, my daughter  is spending a night in a hotel with me because her flight was cancelled. At age 11, I spent a night in a hotel with my mother the night before a late term abortion that had to be performed out of my home state. As her parents, we are actively trying to keep her (and her brothers) safe. My parents provided for me and my siblings but we were not safe with them. 

This is 11.

As I lie here, listening to her heavy breathing as she sleeps, I also began thinking about the interactions my daughter had with my extended family members this past weekend. Everyone adored her. All weekend she heard "you look just like your mother" and "you spit her out". I think she felt bad for her dad and said to me "I have dad's nose and hair", which she does. But to the Wilkersons, she was "little Monique" and was hugged, kissed and squeezed to death! She was both tickled and overwhelmed by the unconditional love that came at her from every direction. She seldom gets to see our extended family but they loved her like she was my 11 year old clone. I was loved up, too but I truly enjoyed watching them love her up. It deepened my sense of feeling loved by them. They loved her because she was of me but they also loved her because she reminded them of me at her age. It was an out of body experience for me and for a moment, I did live through her. I was retroactively receiving the love that they didn't know I critically needed 32 years ago. 

Bearing witness to them doting over her--grandmothers promising her sweets; uncles giving her all the change out of their pockets and letting her cut in the buffet line to get a 3rd helping of macaroni and cheese; aunts giving her peppermints, telling her she is beautiful and embarrassingly talking about her getting breasts. I too, received that extended family caring and praise as a girl. The early safe space created by my extended family has truly been a latent aspect of my survival that I had not given much weight until now. While I may have been facing hell in my household, they had already affirmed me and built me up.

It is important for me to also note that she is both privileged and blessed. In the midst of her tantrum it was my responsibility to remind her to put her life in perspective--missing a party is disappointing but it is not traumatic nor life altering. She should recognize her privilege is that this momentary upset was her greatest pain. 

But I do also appreciate that she is also a child--and children deserve to be heard, validated and loved. They also deserve the freedom to express their feelings of both joy and pain. She had prepared for joy today but she experienced pain. Yet, she is blessed to have both glowed and crumpled under the warm quilt of her immediate and extended family this weekend. 

This is her 11...

...and my 43 year old heart is swelled by the vast ocean that separates our life experiences.