Mothers and Daughters

As I was walking through Target today, I couldn't help noticing all the mothers and daughters.  One lady in her 50s was blocking the aisle with her cart as she stared down the rows of tissue boxes.  Two twenty-something beauties stood waiting for her.  "Mom, what are you doing?  How long does it take to pick out a box of tissues?"  "None of these look right," she proclaimed in an extravagant, Jewish Mother kind of way.  She looked at me and said, "Daughters!"  I just smiled as the girls tossed their shiny black hair and rolled their eyes.  But they laughed and you could tell they loved that woman ridiculously.
And later, in the check-out line, a toddler girl chatted childishly to her young mother while Grandma unloaded the cart onto the conveyor belt.  And I couldn't help wondering...will that be me someday?  Sharing the intimate and mundane with my grown-up daughter and her babies? Or will miles separate us so that I will follow her life in texts and facebook posts?
From the earliest days when I lay in bed in the dark and whispered "I love you" and Hillary tap-tap-tapped back from the womb as if in response, I knew I was connected to this new human in an extraordinary lasting way.  But I secretly harbored the fear that she would grow up and away, straining my heart strings to the breaking point.  After all, I had seen enough tv to know that girls turn into teenagers who think their mothers are awful and outdated.  And I wasn't really sure what came after that.  We lived hours worth of miles from my own mother's mother, and mostly saw her on holidays.  So I didn't know there were women who had mothers for best friends.  I just tried to enjoy the love Hillary lavished on me and braced myself for the day it would stop.  But by some miracle, it never did!  Even as a teenager, she just laughed and rolled her eyes when I acted Matronly.  And as a college student, spreading her wings and trying new things, she keeps me in the loop by generously sharing details of her adventures.  The other day, she texted me from work, "I bet I'm the only walmart employee that texts her mom on her lunch break ;) " To which I responded, "I'll bet so too...but I'm glad!"
I don't know what the future will hold.  Maybe she will marry and move four houses down and ask me to babysit her children.  Maybe she will stay single and travel the world taking pictures of famous people doing fabulous things.  Maybe we will shop together in Target at Christmastime.
Whatever happens, I'm not afraid anymore.  I know that we share a love that allows for freedom and tightly bound security at the same time.  Those heartstrings are so much more elastic than I thought.  Whatever happens I will always be her Mother.  And she will always be my Daughter.