Page 112 of The Frog Prince
No more waiting like Rapunzel locked up in the ivory tower. No more Sleeping Beauty dozing in a high palace chamber. No more Snow White laid out on ice beneath glass.
“Mom, I’m different from you,” I say, “and you should be glad I’m different. You should be glad I want to be me.”
My mother looks at me, and she isn’t crying, but her eyes aren’t completely dry. “Of course I am.”
There’s the “of course” again.
“All I ever wanted was for you to be happy,” she adds, and I think for a minute, think about what’s happened and what will happen, about the things I know and the things I don’t, and I’m not afraid of the future anymore, or the things that could go wrong… because things will also go right.
I can get things right.
Idoget things right. And slowly I’m figuring out life. Figuring out me.
Mom’s still sitting here, looking confused and a little lonely. I know that face because that’s how I’ve felt most of my life. That’s the way I thought I was supposed to feel: not knowing we can choose other paths, other thoughts, other directions, other selves, and not looking back but going forward.
And going forward means doing something for Mom, who has tried so hard all these years to do for me, and because I love her (and fear her), because I need her (and fear that), I’ve made it difficult.
I’ve pushed her away, worried she’d cut my wings and trap me, worried that in this fight called life she’d always be higher than me on the hierarchy totem pole. But it shouldn’t be a fight anymore, at least not a fight between us. We really should be on the same team.
If I can’t protect her back, then who will?
If I can’t defend her against the world, then what good is it being strong and the hero in the fairy tale? If I can’t let my mother know she has succeeded and done well, then how will I ever encourage my own daughter?
But, God, the words are hard. I still don’t have the words. I’ve never known quite what to say.
Awkwardly I reach toward her and take her hand on the table and hold it in mine. Mom looks at me, and the tears are there again, the tears that let me know she hurts far more than she should ever have been hurt, that life hasn’t been easy and maybe all she ever wanted was what she said—for me to have an easier path than hers. For me to be… happy.
“I love you,” I tell her. I don’t know what else to say, don’t know how to make up for all the lost years when we were two strangers trying to find their way home again.
Mom reaches up to wipe away a tear. I must have been one hell of a tyrant daughter if I can make my own mother—a non-weepy woman—cry. “I know you do, Holly.”
“If…” I pause, knowing I can’t say, “If we could do things over,” “If we had another chance,” because life isn’t about going back. It’s not a series of reruns and instant replays. There are no second chances, not the way we’d like. Sometimes we biff it and have to suck it up, living with the consequences. And even if I didn’t always get what I needed from Mom, I realize she didn’t get what she needed from me, and that maybe we’ll never be that close, maybe we’ll never be best friends or bosom buddies—but I am what I am because of her.
I am a hero.
A fighter.
A warrior woman.
I wouldn’t have known how to face challenges and my own fear if I hadn’t been raised by her. And really, does it matter that I learned by distancing myself from her?
Does it matter that I’ve taken the hard-knocks approach to life?
I don’t think so. Not if the outcome is good, and the outcome is good because I’m determined to learn this time, determined to keep putting one foot in front of the other, making corrections where I have to, apologizing when I can. And you know, I won’t change the world, but I’m taking it a step at a time by changing the things that don’t work in—and for—me.
I’m still holding her hand, which is not entirely natural or comfortable for me, the girl with intimacy issues, so I squeeze her hand and let it go. But there is something else I can say. Something else I should say. “Thanks.”
My face feels funny, tight, crooked. I don’t know if it’s embarrassment or a sense of helplessness, but there are so many chaotic emotions inside me, so much that doesn’t feel smart or strong or rock solid. Just mushy, chaotic emotions and the sense that time passes fast. Too fast. No one should have to go through life wondering if they’ve done a good job or if they’re adequate.
I certainly don’t want to go through life feeling like a half-baked citizen of planet Earth.
“You know, Mom, you should come up to the city again. We’ll go see some shows, have dinner, maybe do Fisherman’s Wharf.”
“That would be nice.”
And I know this now: every princess needs goals. A plan, a map, a compass. She has to know where she wants to go or she’ll never get there, spending too long in dungeons, stone towers, and dangerous woods.
I also know this: I’m not the kind of princess who’s going to wait around. I never was.