Loving Sara

"How beautiful is youth! how bright it gleams with its illusions, aspirations, dreams! Book of Beginnings, Story without End, Each maid a heroine, and each man a friend!" - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In the Fall of 2008 I watched Jacob as he showed the signs of interest in a new girl. He had recently ended his romantic relationship with his first girlfriend and though he wasn't talking, I was pretty sure he had his eye on someone else. Long before he was prepared to tell me who the new someone was, I figured out that it was one of his schoolmates, Sara.

Sara wasn't in Jacob's usual gang of friends so I had never met her. She is a beautiful girl, dark skinned and exotic with the figure of a fashion model and the curls of an angel. Jacob finally went public with the romance (after I told him I already knew) and I had a chance to meet Sara when I picked Jacob up from her house one day in November. She reached out to shake my hand and I immediately pulled her into a hug. I knew in that moment, I had met the daughter of my heart.

Jacob and Sara's romance lasted until the end of the school year in 2009. When Sara ended it, I felt sick. Jacob was hurt. He is my child and I love him more than life. But a big part of me struggled with what the end of the romance would mean for my relationship with Sara. Was she breaking up with me too?

Over the summer and through the school year when Sara went away to study in Ottawa, we managed to forge a relationship of our own, independent of Jacob. Sara and Jacob made their peace and resurrected their pre-romance friendship which eased my maternal concern. When Sara was home for holidays or school breaks, we met for lunch, shopping or pedicures. We text and email often and chat on the phone. Today Sara spent the day with me. We didn't really do much of anything. We talked, had lunch and looked at some old pictures. She talked to me about her life and I talked to her about mine. It was a wonderful day.

For many years I thought a lot about what I missed by having only one child. Jacob is all I could have hoped for and more. But I believe I would have been a great mother to a daughter too. And then I met Sara - the daughter of my heart and suddenly the void got so much smaller.