daughters. sisters.

One morning this week the girls and I put on pretty dresses.

We drove to a friend’s house and attended a tea party to celebrate our sweet young friend turning five.

It was a lovely morning.

Tables set up outside in the cool morning breeze. Tablecloths. Real deal china plates and tea cups. French bread smothered in home made cream and fresh strawberries. Scones.

Piper was thrilled to put on a dress. She chose from her plethora of options and happily dressed her dolls to accompany us. Mosely was happy to oblige the dress code suggestion and even submitted to a barrette placed in her hair but requested no braids. London silently agreed to don a dress for the event and asked the most surreal question I’ve heard from her nine-year-old self. “Can I wear one of your dresses?”

(And she did!)

I was raised in a house with a father whom no one would ever accuse of being deeply in touch with his feminine side.

The birth order in my family was son, son, me, son.

I didn’t grow up thinking I wanted a sister. Even as a kid, I knew my role in the family was a pretty cozy one. Extra time with my mom. Daddy’s little girl. Three protectors.

It wasn’t until I grew up, until my brothers were husbands and protectors of other women, until my mother passed away, that I realized the value a sister could have been.  An asset, a lifeline, a friend.

When I thought about having my own family, when I imagined myself as a mother in a house with a husband and children – I thought of the little people sharing my last name as boys.

I was an only daughter in a house of brothers.

Seven years after we were married, we adopted Riley. Our first daughter. One day before I turned thirty, I gave birth to London. Our second daughter. Nine months later Mosely Elliot moved in. Third daughter.

I thought one thing.

Life thought another.

Our home was running over with girls. They filled our two small bedrooms and our already overflowing hearts.

I can’t believe all I wanted was boys.

How little, how uninformed, how small our hopes and our ideas can be.

Our visions and our dreams and our how-my-life-should-turn-out plans are extremely short-sighted and just generally so less than.

I thought I wanted only sons.

(And I’m grateful, so incredibly grateful and in love with my two boys. So blessed I get to mother these future men. But that’s not what this post is about today. It’s not about sons. It’s about daughters.)

On the drive to the tea party I told the girls grinning in my back seat about a younger Lacey. About a girl who grew up with one idea. And received, instead, another idea. A better one. In fact, four incredibly lovely ones.

It has been indeed the most pleasant surprise of my life – this love I have of these girls. This gift of raising females, future mothers and future wives. Girls. Women. Daughters.

It is messy and beautiful and filled with valleys and mountain tops and tears and curled hair and Legos and late night questions and notes and inside jokes and permission granted and permission denied. Teaching skills and sharing stories and long hugs and high fives and shared memories and date nights and long laughs and baking together and saying yes and saying no and saying I love you, I’m so glad you’re my daughter.

Mostly, I can’t believe I get to do this.

It’s so gloriously humbling and so profoundly beyond my abilities.

It’s nothing I ever dreamed. Not anything I planned or even knew how to imagine.

I’m not doing it all right. I don’t even know how to do that.

My girls one day, Lord willing, will sit over coffee (or tea or lemonade or beer) and talk about all the ways I did this mothering task right or did this mothering task wrong. They’ll talk to one another because they’ll have one another.

And I didn’t plan that.

I’m not that good.

This tea party, this day of pretty with my girls, reminded me of how grateful I am that my daughters have sisters.

This gift I didn’t plan and didn’t imagine, but could never have done better.