daughters – Deb Sinness, Author

When my daughter asked me to perform her February 22, 2022 wedding last December, I felt honored yet woefully unprepared and inadequate to perform such a life altering ceremony. I hadn’t attended seminary or done divinity school studies, however I’d lived with a lifetime of spiritual searching. The request sparked my curiosity so I researched what I’d need to do.

There are several sites on the internet that offer ordination. The first thing I learned was it’s important to check with the state you’ll be officiating in because rules vary from state to state. Turns out Florida, where my daughter and her fiancee were planning their wedding, has no special requirements about who performs the ceremony. After reading through different state, local, and organization websites, ordination seemed like the right thing to do. I selected Universal Life Church, then purchased a wedding ceremony kit with scripts and certificates.

The scripts were wonderful, but less personal than we wanted in a ceremony. I wasn’t really sure where to start, so I sent the soon-to-be newlyweds some samples and asked them to share ideas how they wanted their ceremony to feel. The next time I saw them, I asked them specific questions:
> How did you meet?
> What initially drew you together?
> What was your proposal like?
> What do you like most about each other?
> What’s the best adventure you’ve had together?

They also expressed to me how awesome it would be to be pronounced husband and wife at 2:22 PM. I laughed, thinking I’d be lucky if I even got close.

The hard part was putting together a ceremony that we all would be proud of while performing it in front of my partner, the groom’s family, my ex, and his wife. That thought resulted in writer’s block and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to write a ceremony worthy of the occasion. The day before our flight to Florida, I put butt in seat and pen to paper. I reviewed how my daughter and her fiancee had met, fallen in love, and the love I’d witnessed between them and it dawned on me…echo their words to each other to tell the story of their love.

I practiced the ceremony with my partner to get an idea of length, then the night before the wedding we rehearsed and fine-tuned the timing. I knew if we started the ceremony around 2:10 PM, as long as I kept myself together and spoke at a moderate pace, we could do it.

Then it was time for my ex and I to walk our baby girl down the aisle to her love.

The rest of the ceremony is a blur in my mind, but I pulled it off…and pronounced them husband and wife at 2:22 PM with my poem:

Long have you waited for this special day
To gather us together and for each of you to say
You’re my person, I Love You, I’m yours to the end
So as your parents and family, this advice we send
Stay open and honest, transparent and true
There’s nothing more important in marriage to do
Be thrifty, work hard and obey all the laws
Be kind, be faithful, and love each other’s flaws.
We’ve loved and supported each of you since a babe
Now it’s your time with a daughter, a family you’ve made
So with joy in our hearts and a tear in our eyes
I make this pronouncement to those far and wide
By the power invested in me by the state
You’re now husband and wife, it’s legal, you’re life mates.
Now is the time to seal this love with a kiss
Your first of many in legal wedded bliss!

Wishing you a lifetime of love & laughter, Love you much❣️

Mother’s Day has always been bittersweet for me. I became a mother to the daughter I always wanted at 30…and my mother passed three months later. She never got to see and hold her granddaughter, and I was motherless on my first Mother’s Day.

Mother/daughter relationships are complicated.

Five and a half weeks ago I had bicep and rotator cuff surgery. I had heard the recovery was difficult and I can definitely affirm that, but I was unprepared for how helpless I was to do routine tasks…and how much we take for granted having two functional hands.

Knowing I had surgery scheduled in a week, I started using my non-dominant hand to get used to doing daily tasks. I’m very right-handed so the awkwardness of brushing my teeth with my left hand continues to this day.

I reported to surgery at 5:30 AM where I had a pain block with anesthesia for my arthroscopic surgery. My daughter Daisy took me home just after Noon. She had arranged to work from home that first week and I was to recuperate in her big, beefy recliner. I was feeling no pain in my pain block fog so I went upstairs to do a couple of laps around the kitchen and dining room. Then I had a brilliant idea! I need a few things while I’m in the recliner so I’ll just put them in a bag and carry them downstairs with my left hand. Oh, and I need to eat something. Daisy heard the microwave door open and came rushing up the stairs.

“What are you doing Mom? I’m supposed to be getting things for you.”

In my pain block induced stupor, I looked at her indignantly and blurted, “I. Am. Independent. As. Fuck!”

“I’ll make you whatever you want. Please go sit down. You had surgery today.”

I took up my position on her recliner, she put a pillow under my legs, and tucked the blanket around me snug as a bug in a rug as my mom used to say. Not long afterward, she left the room to answer a phone call.

I started getting too warm so I tried kicking the pillow out from under the blanket. When that didn’t work, I scooted down a little and reached with my left hand to grab the pillow and push…and suddenly the reclined chair tipped forward and touched the floor, with the back end in the air. I couldn’t scoot up into it and I definitely couldn’t get out of it.

I was just getting ready to text Daisy to say, “I think I have an issue…” when she came back into the room to find me at the bottom of the topsy turvy recliner. She didn’t skip a beat.

“So how’s that independence working for you now, Mom?”

“Well, I may have been a little hasty after all.”

I spent the rest of that week in a pain coma, trying to get comfortable enough to sleep in my recliner. With my useless right arm hanging like a limp noodle, Daisy and I confronted personal care-taking that I hadn’t imagined. The helplessness I felt was mortifying. The second week was pain coma round two getting off the narcotics and alternating acetaminophen and and ibuprofen. With my elbow and right wrist immobilized, there was little I could do for myself. I needed help dressing, showering, removing bottle caps, and the smallest of tasks that I wouldn’t have thought twice about before the surgery.

Near the end of the second recovery week, the funeral of a beloved aunt, my Mother’s sister, was to take place. My Aunt June was the closest thing I had to a career mentor in the family who was a registered nurse. My Mother looked up to her older sister and one year for my birthday Mom gave me an engraved bent-handle nurse’s scissors hoping I would follow in her sister’s footsteps. When I was raising my daughter out of state, Aunt June kept me in contact with the family and always tried to visit us when she was nearby. When she took the train to see me in Michigan, I surprised her with a bus trip to Niagara Falls. When the bus arrived earlier than planned, we had just enough time to make the last Maid of the Mist tour if we ran. So we did, with fashionable Aunt June running in her platform heels.

The trip was one of my fondest memories and Aunt June meant the world to me. As the weekend of her memorial got closer, the realization that I may not be able to make it was crushing. I took it day by day and tried to regain some strength. My cousin Shane said he would help me so I could go and he picked up me, my suitcase, my ice machine, a cooler filled with more frozen bottles of water and ice packs, and off we went with his mom, my Aunt Myrt.

The weekend spent in the company of my Mother’s extended family and 14 cousins did more to help my healing than any amount of rest could. Their stabilizing presence in my life during my formative years when my mother was hospitalized helped make me the person I am today.

Daughters are always hardest on their mothers and I’ve spent my life trying to understand my Mother and myself as her daughter. Many times when growing up, the last thing we want to to be like our mothers. I’ve spent countless hours in thought, writing, and therapy about mother/daughter relationships. I wrote this poem in the late 1990s.

                          Healing My Mother Wounds
          I will never be the mother my daughter needs me to be
          Just as my Mother was not the mom I thought I needed.
          I can only love, protect, and comfort her to the best of my ability
          knowing that I'll somehow fall short of her expectations...
          and that's okay, because as a daughter my greatest fear
          was to become like my mother with her worrisome ways.
          Until I became one.
          Then I understood with crystal clarity...
          She did the best she could.

Mother/daughter relationships are complicated.

The challenge is even greater when as a mother, you’ve always been in control even though your daughter is an adult. This recovery has been a humbling experience, but I’m thankful to have had Daisy’s loving help and guidance through it. I’m nearing the six week mark when I can start driving and become independent again. To say I’ve been a compliant patient is an overstatement, but I have learned to relinquish control in small doses.

On this Mother’s Day, I’m grateful to my Mother and all the Aunts and women in my life who have mothered me. And to my daughter, ten years ago when I came out, you tucked me under your wing like a mother hen. During this pandemic year we’ve survived break-ups, moves, and surgeries…and if we can get through this, we can get through anything. I am forever grateful that I am your mother, and I’m proud of the woman you’ve become.