Perfect Parent

Last night, as I cleared the dinner table, I watched my daughter playing mother in the living room.

She held her own sippy cup, still half-full of milk, up to her baby doll's rosy plastic lips. When she proceeded to lose her grip and drop the bottle squarely on her baby's head, I heard her say "owie" and then give lots of kisses to the site of the imaginary wound.

She rocked her baby, sang her Twinkle Twinkle, and tucked her in tight on the dog's bed with a pillow and blanket. Then she said (rather demandingly, I might add) "Lay down!" as if the lifeless toy might decide to defy her commands.

As the baby complied, my little girl said sweetly, "Ni-night" and rubbed her back.

This afternoon, I noticed my daughter wiping down the coffee table with a stray Kleenex she managed to swipe. She then marched right over to the trash can to throw the tissue away, both of us beaming at her work.

A sense of pride filled my chest. She learned these things from watching me. She sings lullabies while rocking her baby doll to sleep because that's how I put her to bed. She wipes down tabletops because she sees me tidying up after our meals.

No sooner had the thought passed through me than I heard her yell from across the room, "Ivy, go lay down!" I caught sight of her little index finger extended to show she meant business. "Gooooo!" she continued to scream as our family dog hung her head and complied, with the weary resignation of someone who had lost this argument many times before.

The balloon of pride I had felt moments before was instantly punctured, replaced instead by comically timed humility. For this, too, she has learned from me.

My daughter is always watching, even when I don't realize it. And not everything she learns from me is something I've intentionally tried to teach. Some lessons come from the parts of me that are still growing, too.

But that doesn't mean that my goal in parenting must be perfection. Rather, it means that just as I can show my faults, I can demonstrate how to recover from them.

When I lose my temper, I apologize. I admit that I was wrong for yelling. Even to my two-year-old.

When I feel impatient, I take three deep breaths to try and reset. (Thank you, Miss Rachel). And my girl now thinks it's hilarious to take big dramatic gulps of air right along with me. By the end of it, we are almost always laughing.

When I grumble at the sight of my own reflection in the mirror, I pause, then say out loud three things I love about my body. Even though she doesn't understand my words now, she will. And it will frame the way she thinks about her own skin.

Every day, I learn something new about what it means to be responsible for shaping someone else's perspective on the world. And what I have decided is that perfection is no longer my goal. Presence is. Humility is. Repentance is. Trying again is.

When my daughter is grown, I don't want her to say, "My mom never made mistakes." Imagine how lonely it would feel when she inevitably messes up if she believed that her own mother never did. I wouldn't want to confide in someone like that.

Instead, I hope she says, "My mom taught me how to own my mistakes and move forward."

Because one day, she'll rock her own baby to sleep. She'll wipe down sticky countertops after dinner. She'll probably yell at her dog for committing the crime of simply existing. She will lose her temper, speak too quickly, doubt herself, and hurt people she loves. She'll wonder, as I do now, whether she's getting any of it right.

I know she'll inherit pieces of me. I just hope that among them, she inherits this too: the courage to apologize; the humility to begin again.

And I hope I can grow to be the sort of mother who never convinces her that perfection is possible, but instead shows her that grace always is.