Mothers & Daughters

My good friend (who is much more eloquent than I) had a post about mothers and daughters on her blog. She spoke of complicated relationships.

Everyone has a different experience, don't they? My relationship with my mother was a very complicated one. But my relationships with my daughters are anything but complicated. My children are the great joy of my life. Perhaps it's the compensation for the other complicated relationships in my life.

If I blog long enough, I expect to write about each of my children. But for tonight, I will share one experience that I had with all of them.

As a single mother, we never had much money for vacations, so we went to exotic places like Provo, Ogden, and Logan. I learned early on that a vacation was any motel with a clean swimming pool. When we vacationed in Logan, we hunted down a ghost town that was listed on a tourist map. We drove hours on a dusty dirt road at 25 mph only to find that the ghost town was a single post stating that the town had once been there. It was quite a let-down, but we did have fun on the drive; doing all the things families do on a trip: bickering, laughing, telling stories.

We found ourselves on the north side of the Great Salt Lake in a very secluded spot. We pulled over close to the shore and got out of the mini-van. Nephi was the only one who dared go into the brine-smelling, salty water. He kept trying to splash the other kids and they were all yelling and squeeling. I remember looking over the rippling water, which was a magical color of purple. The dried salt glistened on the rocks, appearing like diamond after diamond along the shore. The only sound for miles was teen-age laughter. It seemed as if my children and I were all alone in the world.

I remember thinking so clearly, "This is as good as it gets."

It was and it is. There have been many moments with my children since then where I experience the same magic...the hospital room where sweet Maddie was born, the airport when the boys came home from their missions, taking the girls out to dinner while the boys are at priesthood meeting for General Conference. Good times.

I had such a hard time growing up. I often felt that I didn't belong in my family. How sweet it is to now have a group of people who always feel like family. Life really does compensate, doesn't it? In fact, it over-compensates, if you live long enough.