To malia on friendship

To my baby girl. Right now you are friends with every stranger on the street. You can go up to any other kid at the park and say “hi friend, want to play” they will say “yes” and  off the two of you will go, hand in hand. Best friends, inseparable, for at least the next 45 minutes. But someday soon that will all change. You will enter high school and those girls you used to rule the playground with will become your competition. Despite my best efforts You will become aware of beauty standards, and boys. Oh the boys. This is the part that will get you. As much as I want to believe that things will be different by the time you are in high school, the odds are, you and other girls, will spend a large portion of your time trying to find ways to cut other girls down in your mind, and to others, to make yourselves feel more desirable. You will focus your mind on chasing boys, and blow off your girl friends on the weekends once you have a boy to replace them.

            I know, I was one of those girls. I had one or two best girl friends, and everyone else was competition. I did everything with those few girls, until I had a boyfriend, at which point I would see those girls in the classes I didn’t have with said boy, and other than that my time was consumed by him. This was a mistake my angel. Please don’t follow in my foot steps.

            Baby girl, you need those girls. Those girls that you blow off, those girls you want to be better than, those are the girls you need most. Even if you pride yourself in being more of a “tomboy” even if you think girls are too much drama and you would rather just hangout with guys, you need girls.

            Becoming a wife and a mom is a beautiful, life changing, amazing, experience. But it can also be very lonely. While its true you are supposed to marry your best friend, you are supposed to have your best woman, your Maid of Honor, right there by your side. She is who you are going to call when your best friend is driving you crazy, and he will. She is who is going to bring over soup and ice cream when you are sick. She will be the first person to tell you happy birthday, and the one telling your husband what he should do to celebrate because he will have no idea. She will know your deepest secrets, and she will care for them like her own. If you are fortunate enough you will get to experience parenthood with her. She will be who you call to share diaper explosions with. She will be there in the middle of the night to babysit your toddler while you're in labor. She will offer time and again to take your babies off your hands when you are having a hard day and she will simply show up and take them when you are being hard headed.

            Baby girl, this friend is invaluable. You need her. She will keep you grounded. There will be times you want to light your husband on fire, and she will remind you how much he loves you and that you would miss him. There will be whole chapters of your life that you only got through because of her strength.

            Don’t get me wrong sweet girl, your marriage will be beautiful, your husband will be amazing, and he will want to be all of those things for you. He will try his hardest to do all of those things for you, and if you chose the right man, he will love you, the best that he can, until his last breath. But you still need her. You need her so you can love your husband back the way that he needs to be loved. You need her to be your sounding board to get your frustration out when he has left his towel on the floor for the hundredth time. You need to vent to her so you don’t yell at him over something so mundane. She will know your dirty secrets and remind you that you leave your bras hanging over the shower rack to dry and he doesn’t complain about that. She will remind you of the time you didn’t put gas in the car and he had to coast to the nearest gas station and loved you through it.

            She, along with your husband, will be your rock. So I am begging you baby girl, don’t make my mistake. Find her early, and keep her. Don’t cast her off in high school the second a cute boy looks your way. You need her baby girl. And she needs you.