By Kristina Morgan
Huele de Noche is an unassuming flowering plant that gives off a heady perfume that will fill an entire yard with its beauty at night. My daughter Maya thinks it looks like a weed. But that “weed” is one of the most beautiful flowers in our yard because of the sheer pleasure I have when I smell it at night. It even fills our house with the sweet smell. I admit that if you don’t recognize Huele de Noche for what it is that it is a little unexpected coming from such a modest flower.
Tonight, as we were leaving the house I stopped and showed my youngest daughter, Maya, the Huele de Noche plant and we both breathed in the scent of this surprising flower that may be small but packs quite a punch! We were leaving the yard and I was driving her to a dance where she was meeting her sister, Lily, and their friends.
As we were driving along, Maya and I chatted about whatever it is mothers and daughters chat about on the way to a dance. Time to be picked up, where she would meet Lily, etc.
Its funny how in retrospect these moments of utter normalcy can become the most poignant moments in our lives and it is also funny that as a person who loves to use words that I feel myself at a loss to describe the moment of clarity I had that made me so proud and in awe of this few seconds that was a blip on the history radar. As a parent, it’s as if I crossed an invisible threshold tonight.
When we arrived, Maya ran in and came back out with Lily and we dealt with logistics. As they turned to go and I saw my tall, blonde daughters, both looking so confident, hair lifting in the breeze and looking so beautiful and capable it made my heart ache as they walked back into the dance, heads bent close together…obviously friends as well as sisters and for some strange reason that knowledge filled me to the brim until I cried. I don’t take this for granted.
These moments of growing up and being kind of caught unawares, even though it sounds so silly, make me catch my breath. ‘Don’t blink or you’ll miss it.’ How often have we all heard those words as parents? It doesn’t matter how gradually I have seen it happen or that we have marked their height or watched them go through these changes every single day for the past 16 years. Sometimes the changes are captured in a flash like a perfect photograph.
There’s no way of truly contrasting what the results in raising them elsewhere would have been and I know that we would have done our very best as parents no matter where we had been. I also don’t believe that who they are is entirely because of their environment or upbringing in our home. I think they come to us, for the most part, as their own people.
But surely choosing to raise them here at Lake Chapala has changed them or shaped them in some way…perhaps ways we will never be able to pinpoint exactly but surely the innocence, safety, family priority in the culture and lack of a generation gap have done their part. We counted on that when we chose to move here and it appears we were right.
I feel so absolutely gifted in who they are and are becoming. I believe that being a mother is my greatest accomplishment and legacy in life but I felt kind of absurdly caught unaware tonight which is kind of silly. They have always been beautiful and amazing young women but tonight it’s like I stumbled on an unexpected Huele de Noche and it has filled every part of me…every corner and every hope I have for them right now feels possible. They are 16 and 13… and they are both like a wish unspoken but a dream fulfilled. I feel so grateful and overwhelmed right now. They are my daughters but they are also two of my best friends.
We must have done something right.
Kristina Morgan: Director
of Public Relations for FocusOnMexico.
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