My mom smiled at me. Her smile kind of hugged me.

I've always wondered what it's like to set your children free in a world filled to the brim with unpredictability. Becoming a mother was my greatest accomplishment, and it makes me think of you. It's true what they say, you know, one never understands the love of a mother until becoming one.

I'm the oldest of two children, born in January, changing the life of a woman forever. She was never the sort of gentle, open woman you'd dream of her to be, but I loved her anyway. No one really knows how to be a parent, after all, even those who've spent their whole lives waiting to become one. It's one thing to dream. It's another to live. There's a lot I'd tell my mother, if I weren't afraid to share. Sometimes, I open my mouth and she comes out. Sometimes, I find myself back inside the mindset of a little girl, too timid to speak up.

I've never been close with my mother. I think the problem was that we were just too different.

Sometimes, I wish I had a girly daughter. I wish you'd wear dresses and let me do your makeup.

It was hard not to feel bad. I did feel bad, for not being the daughter you wanted, as if you were entitled to me simply because you birthed me. After all, you only had one daughter. But I've grown, and I've learned. A child is a doll, a puppet. A person can birth a child, and they can grow up to be nothing like you.

We all deserve a mother who lets us speak openly, without fear of judgment, without fear of reprimand. You were never this mother. With age, I understand more fully the way of your brain. I understand more fully that your anxiety wracked your brain in different ways than mine. With age, you become more of an open woman, more willing to listen - though you listen too little now to make up for the way you never listened before.

Don't shop in this section. It's for boys. Why do you want to dress like a boy?

I think, sometimes, a mother lives vicariously through her children. I knew this was the case for you. I'd put on a dress, and let you do my makeup, and you'd boast about how beautiful and amazing I was. But it seemed I was never beautiful unless I looked the way you wanted. There's still a sense of formality between us, like two acquaintances who don't speak about their personal lives. I never learned how to speak about my personal life.

When I think of my mother, I think of a woman who did the best she knew how. She's a woman who really should have worked through her own issues before having children, but that's common these days; we pass on our traumas to our children. When I was younger, I used to plead to whoever would listen that I'd grow up to be a better mother than you. If my son becomes a parent, I'd like to hope he'll be a better parent than me.

Something I have to tell you is that you'll never see your daughter again. If you really thought about it, you'd realize you never really saw your daughter at all. When I'm not a girl anymore, will you still love me?

Living with my mother felt sort of like living with a stranger. We had little in common. I spent most of my teenage years pretending to be someone who made me uncomfortable, appeasing my mother in the best ways I knew how. I never spoke about it. I never spoke about me. A mother's love should be unconditional. Yours was unconditional until I outgrew what you envisioned in a child.

It feels very strange to age. It feels strange to reminisce on my childhood with my adult experiences. It feels like a shame to understand I've spent my life with so little self-awareness, envying the mothers of my friends and my cousins. I love my mother. Despite this, I know there are some things she could have done differently.