Tears and Laughter: Did you miss Daughter’s Day too?

Evidently, I missed Daughter’s Day. In my defense, I didn’t even know there was a Daughter’s Day. I have had daughters for over 20 years and had never heard of it.

And I’ll be honest, to begin with I ignored it. I thought it was like Short-Girls Day and National Dog Day and we would all soon start to celebrate it at least twice a month on Facebook.

But this was not the case. Over the course of a few days I saw so many sweet posts to daughters that I started feeling guilty. I felt like I had missed somebody’s birthday. I finally keyed in a search for Daughter’s Day and it turns out September 22 actually is Daughter’s Day, in India. But what does a little distance and difference in cultures matter.

Miranda entered my world on my mother’s birthday at Druid City Hospital in Tuscaloosa. She brought a joy I had never known and didn’t expect. Things that had never made sense to me before suddenly came into focus. I was so taken with her that nobody else ever got to hold her much. I would sit for hours just looking at her.

Melissa was born at the same hospital a month shy of two years later. She joined our family seamlessly, as if there had never been a time before her, and like life couldn’t move forward without her.

I just always felt after looking at those two baby daughters that God might allow me more great days along the way, maybe even a few sparkly things on special occasions and a couple trips to Mentone, but there was never going to be anything that could top those girls.

And of course I was naïve about it, because how could I have known, I never had a sister. But I thought these two were going to get along like angels. I envisioned them coloring quietly, sharing crayons. They started fighting just about the time Melissa noticed she had a little fist on the end of her arm. They will still, given the right tone or mood, but they have become friends too, and I guess that’s about the most a mother can hope for.

We welcomed a son in the summer of 2000, but this is about Daughter’s Day. I don’t know if there is a Son’s Day. If not there should be. His sisters claim I have spoiled him.

They tell McKenzie, “You about killed Mama.” She was born in 2004, four days before I turned 32. I will always wonder if left to nature if she would have been born on my birthday. But Dr. Gerrard suggested induction on May 20, and I had been too sick to argue.

If your doctor ever tells you upon news of a positive pregnancy test that you have hyperemesis gravidarum, I’m not going to say go ahead and kiss yourself good-bye, but life as you have known it is about to cease. You will see the limits of the human condition. I remember drifting in and out of consciousness at the severest point of being sick and my main motivation for holding to life was that one spoiled boy, and all those daughters.

That is the tricky thing about them. They come into the world and you don’t think they could ever make it without you, then before long you realize you have it backwards. It is really you that can’t make it without them.

I will try and not forget Daughter’s Day next year, but I probably will and when I do, these words will still be true.

Amanda Walker is a columnist with The West Alabama Watchman, Al.com, The Thomasville Times, and The Wilcox Progressive Era. For more information, visit her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/AmandaWalker.Columnist.