From The Times March 21, 2009 Letter to my daughter

ESTHER FREUD


Esther Freud has written six novels, the first of which, Hideous Kinky, was made into a film. She is married to the actor David Morrissey and they have three children. Her daughter, Anna, is 11.

My lovely girl

I want the world for you, but much more than that – and I don’t care if it’s a cliché – I want you to be happy. If I had magic powers I’d wish on you the ability to take pleasure in small things – a swim in the sea, a good book read on a rug in a summer garden, a delicious meal shared with friends. I say this because when I was 21 I wrote in my diary: “What am I going to do!!! Nothing’s happening. What if it never does?” I laughed, even a few years later when I came across this entry, but what I regret most about my panicked 21-year-old self is that I forgot to live in the present. I was so concerned with the future and my place in it that I forgot to luxuriate in being young.
You’re 11 now, halfway to 21, and I’d be fooling myself if I imagined the girl that you are now, sometimes soft and loving, at others fierce and scowling, will change so much. And probably I don’t want you to. I see you, tall and graceful, your luscious hair and sloping eyes, your curves, your abundantly long lashes, the satin of your skin – just as you are now but even more so. I’m with you as you look into the mirror and I would do anything to give you the gift of loving yourself as much as I love you. Of seeing your reflection and thinking how lucky you are to be you. I never want you to deprive yourself of food, to twist round and ask whether your bum looks big, to lie awake at night, as every girl I’ve ever met has done, and promise yourself that tomorrow you’ll start that diet.
But then again, I think if I hadn’t been so restless I wouldn’t have the life that I have now, with all the things I love in it, with you in it. So, as well as living in the present, I hope you’ll be courageous, seize opportunities, take risks, travel. I imagine you’ll still be bursting with the same ideas you have now just as I’m steering you up to bed – to draw an Aztec mask, carve a spoon from fire wood, make a pattern for a dress. I can see you, kneeling on the floor of your own room – where will it be? – bringing your creations to life, with no one telling you it would be best to wait until the morning.
I’m not going to let myself think of the dangers waiting, the experiments with drugs and drink and men. Will you have already discovered just how easy it is to get pregnant? How hard it is to say no to a group of glamorous friends urging you to get into an unsafe car? Or will you be one of the lucky ones? Mature for your years. Will I?
Instead, I imagine you surrounded by adoring boyfriends. I hope that growing up sandwiched between two brothers will have given you useful tools to negotiate your way with them. “Pity the admirers,” we’ve laughed occasionally, as you swish through the house, sharpening your tongue, irritated by everything your brothers do, but then again, maybe love will soften your defences. Give you back to yourself, as it did for me. You don’t always believe it, but usually others want what’s best for you, they’re not trying to trick you, they’re mostly on your side. At least I hope they will be.
But whatever I want for you, I know you’ll go your own way. It’s traditional for daughters not to listen to their mothers, not till much later, at least. So even if I wistfully remind you of the day you decided to make your own calamari, or set up a stall selling home-made earrings outside the front door, what I really know is that you’ll have to be independent, and follow your own 21-year-old dreams. But however independent you become, don’t forget, whenever you need me, I’ll be there. If your heart is broken, or your workload is too heavy, or if you are consumed with worry that Nothing is ever going to Happen in your Life, please come to me and share your burden and I’ll remind you how we hold a bit of everything inside ourselves, weak and strong, and that as a child, although you still often woke in the dead of night and needed to be comforted, at other times you cycled down country lanes, no hands on the handlebars, or ran fearless into an ice-cold British sea.