Daughters: the gift that keeps on giving

There’s a romantic chick flick on the TV instead of a football game, every bathroom in my home is either occupied or overflowing with some kind of goat milk and guava juice body scrub, and there is more estrogen here than at a convention of NFL cheerleaders. All of this can only mean one thing: My daughters are home for Christmas. The gifts I get from that are boundless:

. My wife could not be more lit up than if I had strung her with Christmas lights from stem to sternum, and her heart overflows with the joy of a mother whose kids are still crazy happy to call hers their home;

. Just being around them is teaching me the advantages of pH balancing my hair and exfoliating my pores, or is it exfoliating my hair and pH balancing my pores? They best stay for more lessons, lest I have a terrible cosmetics accident;

. They have learned to use the hand tools I bought and sent to college with them, and have acknowledged that a well-equipped young woman has confidence, street smarts, good underwear, sensible shoes, and a toolbox with hammer, screwdrivers, pliers, and a small saw. Now if they would only believe me when I tell them they also need a table saw and a nail gun, just in case they have to whack together a picnic table or bookcase on short notice;

. I get to see we have daughters who have become young women I would be impressed with even if they were not ours. Parents that lucky also get the gift of knowing that, despite all of the things we could have done better, we have done well at the hardest job we ever had;

. I get to hear the sounds of raucous laughter bouncing once again off the walls of our home, speaking as it does of two adult children who love each other’s company. Few gifts to parents are richer than having children who grow up to be fast friends, for parents know someday those children will be left alone with each other. Adult children who are not friends can give something wonderful to their parents by finding a way to enjoy the company of siblings;

. Knowing that my daughters love Christmas as I do, want to hear the music, want to have “Twas the Night Before Christmas” read Christmas Eve, and more, is a gift worth having all year long. I love that they want to unpack all of the ornaments that speak of our life together – first home ornament dated 1988, Barbie ornaments, creche scenes (which always prompt the memory of one of my young children referring to Joseph and the wise men as “Jofus and the Three Wide Men”), ornaments they made in kindergarten, and the ornaments we have given them over the years that some day will adorn the trees of their homes. Each box of ornaments is a trip down memory lane of Christmases past;

. Their attitudes, experiences, beliefs and opportunities speak to me of how much the world can be changed in a generation. They remind me how important it is to never accept that right cannot be wronged, that peace cannot be won, and that the hungry cannot all be fed. They affirm my belief in the future of the world, and in the value of always trying to make it better;

. Being with them gives this gift born of current events; I am the parent of soldier-age children who are not American soldiers. I am proud and so appreciative of those whose children are serving and so desperately glad mine are not. I am humbled and saddened by the burden carried by families celebrating Christmas with a loved one at war, and my heart aches for those with a war-emptied spot at their Christmas feast;

. My adult daughters give me the gift of still being able to see the child in them, sleeping in beds they don’t sleep in much these days while hugging favorite, old stuffed animals, or watching the “Grinch That Stole Christmas” while cheering on Max the dog and singing with the Whos in Whoville;

. Seeing what they are doing now – one in college and one in medical school – gives me the gift of insight into what they are capable of doing in the real world. The youngest, for example, recently completed a painting that, had I seen it in the window of a New York City art gallery, I would have stopped and stared, captivated and wondering what it would cost to buy, guessing it was too much, and wondering who the artist was that painted such a beautiful piece. The oldest called me recently after using a bone saw to open the spine of her med school cadaver, sounding like a surgeon in the making. Who are these young women and where did my babies go?

. Finally, on Christmas morning they will give my wife and I the gift of hauling their stockings up to our bedroom and sitting on the foot of our bed to open the contents, and I will be able to imagine for just a moment that we will always be together for Christmas. And at that moment, Santa will have gotten just what he asked for.

Erik Steele, D.O., a physician in Bangor, is chief medical officer of Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems and is on the staff of several hospital emergency rooms in the region.