Dear Ann and Aimee,

I’d like to say about a few things that are important to me, and that I hope will be important to both of you. Please be patient if I ramble a bit.

Well, you know that I can be unreasonable at times, and sometimes I’m distant or angry when you don’t think I have any reason to be. You learned some years ago that I am not always right about things, even though I still tend talk as though I expect you to think so. Now, sometimes it’s you who is right when I am wrong, and with increasing frequency I learn more from our conversations than you do.

That part of your life that excludes your papa and me is quickly growing bigger. We may be growing relatively smaller and maybe less relevant to you as your horizon broadens. We are less in your thoughts, and our prescriptions and proscriptions and our advice are maybe less and less influential in your decisions, and perhaps less welcome as well.

You’re also at the age where life is becoming much more complicated. You have more personal goals that you have developed on your own, as well as more responsibility for achieving them. Your own values, desires and aspirations may be pulling you in conflicting directions.

Your friends are becoming more complex, too, and it may be hard for you to understand why they act towards you the way they do. The new world of sexuality may be knocking your relations with your special friends out of kilter. It may be stirring things up so much that you despair of ever sorting it all out.

Hate has been largely unknown to you, so it may puzzle you to see that you are also beginning to have enemies. You might find that there are individuals or groups that dislike you or even hate you simply for what you are, or what you aren’t; maybe it’s because of what they themselves are or aren’t, the differences between you and them, or because you reject their attempts to control you.

You are facing more expectations and more restrictions from every direction. Your friends, your school, your papa and I, and society in general are all demanding more and more from you. Maybe you’re beginning to have doubts about yourself because of all that.

Over the years, you have surpassed me in a number of ways. Even as a small child you began to develop a talent that remains for me only a wish. You learned to see flaws in my knowledge and argument. The milestones of your development are all points of tremendous pride and satisfaction to me.

Now, I don’t pretend to understand your situation completely. You are you and I am me. We have grown up in different worlds to some degree. Hell, I don’t even understand my own situation perfectly, even at my age. Still, I hope you will understand and remember that I have a depth and breadth of experience that can still serve you very well as you struggle through these next years of teen hood and early adulthood.

For every mistake you have made so far, I’ve made a dozen more of a dozen more kinds. For every hurt you’ve had, I’ve had more and deeper. I’ve traveled the highways, the byways and the alleyways of life, and even some of the gutters, while you’ve barely gotten out of the driveway. The angst that sometimes consumes your whole being now and that wonderful, enviable, excitement at the grandness and importance of the ideas that are entering your bright mind are for me now only distant memories mixed with nostalgia and amusement, small in the background of a long life fully lived.

I may not always have an answer that solves your problem; you may not like my advice, and you may not agree with it. That’s up to you. In any case, my advice is only offered. I give you only the best that I have and my only purpose is to help. Consider it fairly in the wider context of your life. If it helps you understand your situation or overcome a hurdle in life, I will be happy and fulfilled. If you have sufficient wisdom to step upon my advice to reach a level that is even higher than I can take you, then I will be even happier and proud as well.

I hope deeply that you will want to tell me about your problems, huge or tiny, even if I have little more to offer than a pair of ears to listen and hear you out.

I care more for you than I do for myself or any other part of my life, past or present. I want to help you be strong enough to cope with life’s many challenges, which are now only beginning to bear on you. I want to help you achieve an understanding of yourself and the world around you that will allow you to live a full and gratifying life. I want to help you maintain a goodness of heart that will let you feel joy in life and support and nurture those that you will love.

That’s what it means for me to be your mama, and I will always be that for both of you.

I love you very much.

Always, Mama