Birthday Gift

For my birthday a couple of months ago, my daughter gave me a certificate good for a couple of hours of computer help. I am not exactly computer illiterate, but I have many questions about how to manage files, how to accomplish tasks more easily. What I really pined for was a kind of ' handy man' who would make my computer clean and lean and answer my dumb questions. My daughter does not have a lot of time. She runs a business, works in other jobs part time, tutors, and is the mother of a toddler.

But this weekend she came with her son who loves the ranch and has spent many weekends alone with us. Having the two of them together here was certainly a gift, but when Quincy went down for a nap we went to my studio and the computer there.

"Now, Mom, I know this is a lot like reorganizing your underwear drawer," she says as she is swiftly deleting unwanted files. "Says here you haven't used this since '06. It's gone." She carefully shows me through a few new ways of doing things. But she is really appalled at my lack of organization. "Why haven't you put all these similar things in one file?" We make a lot of new files and fill them with similar things. I cringe (she is in my underwear drawer) and wonder what horrid dogeared thing she'll find next. I have always been such a private person, though there are no skeletons that I know of.

She insisted on taking my whole photo file of thousands of pictures, loaded onto a flash drive. She'll organize these. I am uncomfortable with the enormity of this task, asking anyone to do it. But she says she loves doing this. She is the family anthropologist, nosey since birth, and I know she'll enjoy going through years of my photos. She'll put all my arts photos where they belong, she'll arrange all those photos of wildflowers, and she'll put all the family events in some kind of order. Because she's my daughter and so close, she'll delete the terrible pictures. This is a gift beyond all imagining.

The worm turns. I remember the actual act of helping her (making her!) get some organization into her physical space. "Clean your room today!" But mostly, I was respectful of her space, and when I could not stand the mess, I would quietly close the door.

I remember when she was as young as Quincy and I catered to her every need. I had no idea then that she would one day be a fan tastically competent and organized adult who could or would want to teach me things. I see her son, Quincy, now- today by turns wonderful and horrid. I remember his mother at this point. Could I have believed that this baby woman would one day be this wonderful young woman, so generous and curious and able? And so she has turned out. I am priviledged to have this daughter I love so much.