Dear Ms Rockstar, A First Letter

Dear Ms Rockstar,

This is probably the first real letter I’m writing to Future You, at a time when you are 4 months and 1 week old and have just screamed the pediatrician’s office down, staring your sense of betrayal up in our hypocritical faces, to dare to bring you to this horrible, horrible place of motor skill checks and needles and tell you It’s Alright It’s Alright. You were already voicing displeasure long before they gave you your shots because you were hungry (90 minutes of strictly not eating, having not fed very well since you woke for reasons known only to yourself) and rather tired (having not managed to drift off for your long nap til just 20 minutes before it was time to leave for the clinic.)

Well anyway. Looking into the face of the most beautiful baby girl in her world, Mummy has so many dreams of what she will tell you, things she wants to teach you. Foremost among them is to not grow up spoilt. Jaded. Failing to see the beauty in all the things He has created.

You will need these in life, because a sense of entitlement will kill you. Maybe not literally, but it will kill the you you could aspire to be. (Just as the inability to use any and all circumstance to become a better version of yourself will be a waste of a bad situation.)

If/when you find a life partner someday, Mummy will tell you that forever and ever is not easy. (Mummy blames Hollywood.) You cannot fathom how not easy, until you go down that route. You will think at the start of the road that Sure, You’re Prepared. Love Overcomes. But that was just stuff people made up to sell books and albums. The problem is when gifted script and song writers are mistaken for life coaches. They’re just super marketers and salesmen. The reality is it takes effort to stay in love. And there will be times when you’d rather not be. Every marriage has its crisis points. It’s bullshit when people say they don’t have them.

More than initial compatibility, Mummy feels, is the determination to make it work, to stick to your vows. It takes effort to stay in love. That’s the bit people don’t warn you enough.

And no, if you get married Mummy’s not gonna tell you to walk all over your other half  because he is someone else’s child too. He is someone else’s Most Beautiful Baby Boy, just as you are Mummy’s Most Beautiful Baby Girl, always. And the only way to make a marriage, a family, some semblance of an existence among extended family co-existing harmoniously instead of say everyone dreading Chinese New Year or Christmas and Thanksgiving, will be to recognize the fact: That’s someone else’s child/ parent/ dog/ cat. Mummy wants you to enjoy Chinese New Year in a way she always wished she could. If she had her way, the biggest family tradition, at whichever time in the year that might be, would be one of love and kindness – is that not the spirit, and be not the spirit far more important, than the letter of the law. Empty traditions, when people stick to the letter and not the spirit Mummy finds, are an oxymoron. But well at least there’s still Christmas.

Somewhere in there are repercussions for not being kind. For not doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. Not because He is a vengeful God, He’s not. But because He is a parent, and you have to learn to grow up, to live, to love. Or get sent to your room. Have your sleepover privileges revoked, weekly spending allowance restricted. You know, how parents can discipline you…

The hardest lesson Mummy will have her work cut out teaching you and your brother is how to be happy whatever your circumstances. Because Mummy doesn’t know all the ways (though certainly having a faith in God helps) and she’s still trying, though she knows it’s where she wants to be ultimately. Not because life is beautiful, but because life sucks. We’re just trying to mess about surrounded by assholes every day until the day we croak. But we won’t survive said assholes unless we can see life as beautiful. Mummy’s not giving you any righteous bullshit here – seeing the good, the beauty, will raise your resilience like no other. It will allow you to take the rubbish while you’re drawing back your little fist to give the idiot annoying you the punch on the nose he so rightly deserves. (No, not really serious bout that)

Being unable to see beauty will sentence you to an inability to find happiness, “no matter how hard you try.” It is its own kind of hell, the inability to be happy.

Your brother, insisting on sitting on Daddy's knee while he is carrying you so Mummy can walk the dog

Your brother told me sometime ago that he will find it hardest to share Daddy with you. (Mummy of course is no problem, your brother can mostly take or leave Mummy. In his words, “Of course I love Daddy more, he’s the guy.” <roll eyes>) Mummy is told this is unusual, your brother’s very strong preference for Daddy from very young –  apparently it’s more common in families to have Mummy’s Boys and Daddy’s Girls. Your brother is very much a Daddy’s Boy whom it would seem has yet to completely forgive Mummy for once having been a girl. So Mummy guesses you’ll be stuck with her.

Daddy and Daddy's Boy sharing the papers while you were attached to Mummy in the harness

Mummy however sees our family dynamic as a blessing. Your father has no idea how to raise you in this world. (But dungeons are always a good idea). He already often finds it hard to say no to your brother, who gets away with not eating eggs for breakfast for kicks. Even Mummy is not completely sure how to raise a little girl in this new world, she’s frankly terrified, though she has some ideas from having herself been a little girl who grew up bullied initially and (mostly) eventually did not take crap from assholes. (Mummy says “mostly” because she has a naturally long fuse even though she is outspoken).

At least Mummy is determined you will neither grow up spoilt nor Tiger Parented. The latter for obvious reasons, but the former because Life and Forever And Ever Til Death Do You Part Someday are tough. Spoiling you or making you unprepared in any other way will just make it tougher. Mummy wants you to be happy in life and marriage, if you so choose someday. You will not be happy if you expect things to always go your way, nor will you make your spouse, someone else’s child, happy. And if your spouse doesn’t meet you halfway in making you happy, in supporting you as you support him faithfully as his wife…. well don’t rely on your brother and father, get up to speed about kicking his butt all on your own, please.

Because you are after all Mummy’s little baby girl and she loves you. She’ll teach you to kick butt too, if it ever comes to it.

Love,

Mummy.