CHARACTER

My daughter got the upper part of her ear pierced last Friday. She called me on Saturday morning and asked, "Mom will you be mad at me if I did something?" WHAT I wondered? Many a thing came to me in that pause of a moment--tatoo, drugs, sex, nose piercing. "No." I answered carefully. "I got the cartilage of my ear pierced," she said quietly. "WHAT!" I screamed into the phone and "YOU DID WHAT?" and "WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?" I guess I lied about the being mad part.
You see I've never really been a fan of tatoos and piercings. I think it looks trashy and rednecky. I think it takes a beautiful body and decimates it. But that's just me. And I thought my daughter felt the same way.
"What did she do?" My husband was overhearing the whole conversation.
"She got her friggin' ear pierced," I said.
He took it better than I did. He didn't like it but he realized quicker than I did that she IS twenty. She IS an adult. It IS her body.
I still didn't like it and made it known. Because I remembered all the conversations we had had in the past when we saw senior citizens with tatoos that had begun to sag, when we saw the checkout girl at Claires pierced in so many places we thought that she may just deflate, slowly, like a ballon with a tiny hole. When we watched the Academy Awards and thought how beautiful Angelina Jolie looked in that long, red designer dress if only she didn't have that obnoxious tatoo around her arm.
My husband took the phone from me. "Does it look cool?" He tried to remedy the situation.

A couple of hours later I texted and simply asked why? She told me her friends were all getting peircings and she got talked into it. I asked her, "Is that true? Or did you really want to get it? Because if you really wanted to get it, it's okay with me." She didn't respond.

Even later I got a text from her. I took the earring out.
Why? I texted? I hope you didn't do it for me.
She texted. I took the earring out. I came to the conclusion that it looked trashy and I didn't want to have it on my wedding day. She said her friends were mad at her.

I realized at that second that my daughter has CHARACTER. She did something SHE wanted to do, not me, not her friends, not the big Being above. HER. And like I am, so many times for both my daughters, I feel proud.

The earring closed up. Now I have a new picture in my mind. I see her. I see her in a beautiful white wedding dress, mermaid design--tight fitting around her torso and hips, then flared out and of course a long train. I see her beautiful, long blonde hair wrapped into a French knot or chignon. Her ears with simple pearls (a wedding present from me?) or diamonds...She looks elegant and beautiful and true.