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This has been a hard month. It’s one thing to say you are having “one of those days.” But how is it even possible to have “one of those...months?” Truly, though, I feel like Cybill in this month of April. The weather is definitely part of it. After that awesome mild winter, we have entered this new awful scenario called “Winter-Spring.” “Winter-Spring” is when the temperatures plummet into a deep black cold abyss. “Winter-Spring” means that it’s never going to be sunny for more than a few minutes, and most days, especially weekends, it’s going to snow/rain. I could live with snow/rain…when it was February/March. But it’s April—so obviously Duluth landed on Mother Nature’s most hated list somehow. Then there’s the cruel, twisted little scenario going on at the capitol, where legislators have decided to take away my happiness. They are trying to defeat the Viking Stadium proposal. I have my Minnesota state flag waiting to be hung upside down outside my house if those seemingly atrocious people actually force MY Minnesota Vikings to Los Angeles. I’ll hang it and there it will stay—or I will move. That’s a promise.

All that aside, however, I have another reason to be feeling a little less than my norm these days. In a week, my beautiful baby girl is turning eleven years old. I can hardly believe it. I still can’t fathom how she went from Dora and princesses to Bieber and lipstick. I literally just tucked her into her toddler bed last night, it feels, and now she doesn’t ask me to tuck her in anymore. I still do it, of course. I don’t know that I could stop. It’s my weird little OCD secret that I occasionally sneak into her bedroom at 2 a.m. to verify she hasn’t died of SIDS. Once she woke up during such an episode. “Mom, can you please not put your finger under my nose when I’m sleeping...” If you’re a parent, you understand. It’s the “Are you still breathing?” check we do to our babies. I promise it could be sort of normal.

Obviously, as she’s turning eleven, I had my daughter very young. She changed my life. The minute I felt her kick, that was it for me. I loved her. I went from crazy wild teenager to her mom in a blink of an eye. The moment I actually held her, after 32 hours of screaming in a hospital bed, that was it. She took my heart and has kept it wholly inside herself. I knew from that day forward that if nothing else, my purpose in life was to love and protect this little thing. She’s amazing. I’ve only just begun to see the visions and traces of what kind of amazing woman this girl is going to be. Yet, I’m sad because she’s just not a little kid anymore. I’m sad because she’s entering that oh-so-vulnerable era of the in-between stage, followed by the terrible teens. For so long, she has listened to every word out of my mouth. For so long, she valued my thoughts over everyone else. But lately that’s changing. I went from being MAMA!!!! to just being Mom. And I’m sad and afraid because in the ways of today’s society, I don’t know how to adequately protect her.

Those in-between years are hard for anyone. You’re not a little kid, but you’re not a teenager yet, but you feel like you’re older... It’s a difficult transition. I have to say, however, I do believe that what girls today are facing has to be the hardest transition to date. The societal influence is to grow up. It pushes girls to grow up far too fast and to believe every part of their worth is based on sexiness and body image. Society shows them graphic, over-sexualized images in every single aspect. Not true, you say? Ha! Just a little example: that was Selena Gomez I saw on the cover of Cosmo magazine a few months ago, right? Little Alex from the Disney Channel’s “Wizards of Waverley Place”? A silly sitcom geared to my child’s age group. Selena Gomez is the main character, a pre-teen wizard just trying to find her place in life. Yet here she is, on the cover of Cosmo—super-low-cut dress, one leg bent up in the air, seductive smile, the caption reading something about “Try these Super Hot Moves on your Man.” Really?  Actually, guilty as charged—I read Cosmo, but hello, I’m of age! So when I opened the cover and saw goddamn Hermione Granger from Harry Potter posing in a naughty bikini on the very next page, that was too much for me. How can I teach my girl that she doesn’t need to be like that? That sexy doesn’t matter—that sexy shouldn’t even be a word in her vocabulary yet. How do I tell her that, when she can see from the magazine rack at Super One that it does, that in this life, in these times, it does. I hate that.

How do I teach her that popular doesn’t matter? I try to tell her that now I don’t talk to a single person I went to school with whom I thought it was so important to be friends with then. How do I show her that any effort she puts into attaining too many friends, too many boyfriends, too many anything at this age is sincerely lost to you as an adult? How can I make her understand that life is fleeting, yet education is not? That as much as she hates it, homework matters, and cell phones do not? Math IS used when you are older, every day, and fake nails just break. She hates her cowlicks—how do I explain they are part of her beauty? She wants to wear mascara, she wants pink highlights. How do I tell her that some of that has to wait, yet still be her mom/friend, which I’m pretty sure is a necessary relationship between mother and daughter to come to any terms on anything? I wake up at night over this stuff, if nothing else. This is what’s important to me.  Can I protect her from predators? Can I make her see her own worth? I’m telling you, this girl has wisdom and grace beyond her little eleven years. I just need her to see that for herself.

So as I said, I have a lot on my mental plate this month. But summer is around the corner. The weather will change, the Vikings predicament will be figured out—but my dilemma of protecting my birthday girl will never end. I’ve got her back, no matter the path she and I are about to go down. We are taking this path together—whether she likes it or not.