Last night my daughter called me, giving me some of the best news possible!

No, she is not pregnant.  In fact, I’ll be surprised if I live long enough to see grandchildren.

My daughter has always been a wonderfully creative writer. Every time I read her poems and prose, I wonder who this person is who looks like me, but has a talent that she certainly did not get from me.

For those of you who know me, don’t worry, I know I write well, but only technically. I am not a creative writer by any stretch of the imagination. But she is.

From about 12 to 18 years old, she often wrote daily, and it just flowed out of her. Her poems’ structures betray her youth and inexperience. But the words she puts together are stunning and powerful. They also manifest very deep pain and a longing to let her live with herself, including the dark and wounded parts of her soul.

Then at about 18, she stopped writing. She had school, then a job, then a boyfriend who she will probably marry. And it scared me that she stopped writing, because every day she did not write was another day she kept herself from the magnificent talent that is a vital part of “her.”

I’ve harped on her a lot over the years, begging her to at least write for fifteen minutes a day, just so she’d keep writing. But, of course, a nagging mother is an ignored mother. Frankly, I never let it go, but I did back off a lot.

So, last night she called me, and I was ecstatic to hear she had joined a Creative Writer’s Workshop!

In fact, she had gone to great lengths to join the workshop, as she was late registering and the group was at its limit. In the past, she would have just dropped it, but not this time. She kept calling them until they let her in! I was astonished when she told me this.

It was so funny, because she knew how I would react, and she was right. I was shouting how happy I was, telling her I was doing happy dances, and gushing how proud of her I was. She had told her boyfriend how happy I would be, so after she told me the news, she held up her phone so he could hear what she had been talking about. Apparently, although he was across the room, he could hear me just fine.

I am struck by the sense of relief I have, because I really thought she didn’t care about her writing anymore. That was heartbreaking to me, and I grieved my dreams that she would continue to write, giving me, and others, the gift of her words. I was afraid there would be no more tender, poignant, dark, frightening, and hopeful prose that, even if no one else ever saw it, would be something I could hold on to that was completely her. Sounds selfish, I know. Guilty as charged.

The workshop instructor gave them a writing assignment in class, and then they read each other’s composition to the group, where it was critiqued by the other members. It was a narrative, and when she read it to me I remembered the feeling of total awe I used to have as I just let her words sink in.

All of the workshop’s members gave her great feedback, most of it positive, and some critical, which is exactly what a workshop is supposed to do. And as she told me about it, for the first time I heard her admit that she was proud of her talent. I’d never sensed that from her before. I had told her repeatedly, almost daily, how talented she was, but she had never told her.

So, while she’s not pregnant, I do feel like she’s given me a grandchild of sorts, as her writing will be a legacy for all of us, including her children, tomorrow and generations to come.

But even if no one else reads it, for some reason it is very important to me to know that it exists. And I think it is now important to her, as well.

Elphaba