My daughter was my first born. She was beautiful. She had my heart and apparently I had hers.

She screamed and cried every time I left her at the babysitters. I cried too. I would carry guilt in my heart for leaving her as I drove to college to finish my nursing degree.

She became very close to me and was shy among children her own age. The street that we lived on had two girls that wanted to play with her. She wouldn’t even cross the street without me.

One day I was obsessed with a book and sitting on the curb in front of my house. She wanted me to go across the street with her. I refused. She asked me again. I refused again.

I wanted to read, I really didn’t want to go across the street and engage in small talk with the neighbors. So she stepped out on her own and I never had to cross the street with her again.

A few years later my neighbor lady shared a concern with me that she had for her own daughter. She said every time her daughter came home from school she said how much she wished she was like my daughter. My daughter was so popular.

The lady was worried that her daughter was not making friends.

I asked my daughter to come and talk to the lady because I didn’t really know what to say.

The lady asked my daughter if anyone played with her daughter. She paused for a moment and then said, “She has friends.” She reassured the woman again and I could see the mother relaxing.

No mother wants their child to feel lonely. I understood.

There have been times when I have regretted that day I sat on the curb. Something changed between my daughter and me that day.

I realized that was the first day she flew without my wings covering her.

I could have kept her under my wings, sheltering her and protecting her.

Isn’t that what love is?

If I did that, she would have never flown solo, she wouldn’t have been strong enough.

Instead I forced her to take the gift of confidence and encouraged her to fly, demanded it even.

As she flew out from under my wings it was if I saw her beauty for the first time. Just her, not me and her, and she  gets more  beautiful and confident the higher she soars.