When she was three years old I was her hero. When she was nine I was her best friend. I was once her everything, by fourteen I was the only one she felt she could trust. I love my little girl. We were inseparable since her birth, everywhere I would go, she would go. I played dolls, got down on my knees and pretended to be a dinosaur. I was the “cool� mom on the block that all her friends wanted to hang out with.

When she was a baby, I would dress her up in pageant dresses and stick bows on her little head. As soon as her eyes focused I spent hours in front of her with flash cards, which I hope has lead to the scholarship and honors she has received. If not, she still allows me to believe it had something to do with me. But she has never grown so big that there is no room on my lap for her.

Many people envied our relationship often asking how we became so close. We never became anything, we just were. I liked being her best friend, the person she could tell everything too. Then I realized one day, I wasn’t just her best friend, she was mine as well. With that I never wanted to hold my best friend back from anything. I would never shelter her from achieving her dreams. I wanted to do everything right, so that her life could never go wrong.

Six months ago she and her sister decided they wanted to live some place new. They wanted to experience new and different things. They wanted to meet new people, so I allowed my two closest friends to leave me, and go live with their father. I did not want to let go but I knew that I could not retard my children’s emotional or spiritual growth by refusing their wish. This was something they really wanted to do. It has been so lonely without them sometimes I wonder if I had made a mistake. I figured that they would be back after a couple months. It had always been hard for them to be away from me for any amount of time. But this wasn’t the case, not this time.

Their phone calls to me decreased and when I call, they are short with me and off to some event with friends. They are happy there and they are happy without me. I not only miss my girls but I miss their friends piling up in my house and eating all my food. I would give anything to have too clean up a wrecked house after a party. My phone don’t ring off the hook and they don’t hang out their window talking to friends after I have made them come in for the night. My home is so quite, nobody here to laugh at my jokes. My husband is way to mature for me!

Our last phone call, I had to swallow my tears as she told me she decided she was going to attend college where her father lives. We had planned for years for her to live at home with me while attending college. I wanted her college years to be stress free so she could focus on her academic and social life, without financial obligations. I could not believe my ears. That was the one thing I looked forward too. That she would be coming back home soon. I felt disappointed, I am still very hurt. But who am I to try and get in the way of her happiness. Then I ask her “Maddie, but Maddie why? Why would you change your mind, mom wants you to come home, your room is all ready.� And because of our closeness she felt no reason to lie. “ Because mommy, Rob my boy friend loves me and I really love him. We want to go to the same college and marry someday.�

I knew this day would come, I never would have guessed so soon. I knew a young man would fall in love with her. Who couldn’t love her she is a beautiful young woman with the kindest heart of anyone I know. There is not a selfish bone in her body and she lives just to give to others. Most days I wish I were more like her. I use to tell her that when I grew up I wanted to be just like her.

I wanted to be selfish and tell her NO! Demand that she return home right away. But I knew that this would not be right by her. I thought back to my own first love and how happy he made me feel. I was deliriously in love with my high school sweetheart. I thought that I would marry him too. A teenager’s love affair is just as passionate, romantic and real as a twenty-one year old or a forty year olds, if not more. The excitement of everything being brand new is beyond this world. That is when a phone call still thrills us and a day without our love feels like a year. I want my daughter to experience all the good things in life. And what she is feeling now is one of the best things of all. Young Love!

In reality, I know that the likely hood of them marrying is slim. I know that others will come and most likely go. It doesn’t change that I was stood up for someone she has only known a short time. But twenty years ago I may have made the same decision. I traveled 1700 miles to meet him, and I like him a lot. And he is good to her and he truly does love Maddie. So my gift to her is letting go.

Before we hung up she did say to me. “ Don’t worry mommy, your still my best friend. “