For the Unbloomed

Tillie Olsen's short story "I Stand Here Ironing" offers a great line of wisdom which is also bittersweet to me since I myself have been a mother standing at a proverbial ironing board wondering about my daughter's life, her future, her choices, her past, her birth, and everything else about her. Toward the end of the story, Olsen wrote "so all that is in her will not bloom--but in how many does it?" And that is the line I most relate to since I feel the same about my own child and unfortunately I have to live with the idea that I did my best but it just wasn't good enough. Now, she is 16. But when she was 13 she was a cross country runner who was so full of talent and zest that as her ponytail would bounce by me on her way down a trail I would see her flying like a bug past all others into first place. I saw her at the Olympics. I saw her jogging with a baby stroller. I saw her unlike all the other girls: she was going to be the best. But then she changed. Or was it I who changed? Now she is not a runner and I am not a mother anymore, either. I actually don't know who I am.