Personal Essay

Jenny Jedeikin The Big Picture This article appeared on page CM - 20 of the San Francisco Chronicle Sunday, May 6, 2007, San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday Magazine My compact 6-year-old daughter, Tilly, is standing in the middle of the kitchen in a pink Roxy skirt after dinner, looking serious. There are small stacks of dirty plates on either side of the sink, and although it's only been an hour since mealtime, the state of the kitchen does not meet with her approval. "Mom," she says, looking around, suddenly bursting into a high-pitched panic. "This isn't right! The dirty dishes should be on the other side of the sink!" She is screaming and pointing her finger, gesturing toward the left side of the sink. "Give that to me," she says, grabbing the plate from my hand. "You don't get it, Mom," she sighs, exasperated. "You don't even know how to have a house!" According to Tilly, I also don't know how to wear clothing. She notices that I dress boyishly lately, and she tells me she wants me to dress

more like a fancy woman. She asks me if she can pick out my outfit. I say I will let her pick out something, but there's no guarantee I will wear it. I am lying on my bed. Tilly finds the fanciest shoes I own and puts them on my feet. They are blue suede slip-ons from Prada. "Minna, look at Mommy's feet," Tilly says to her big sister, shielding the rest of me from view with her hand. "Just her feet. Don't they look pretty?" My daughters want to turn me into the lady I'm not, but they love me anyway. That's what's so convenient about children; if you don't meet their expectations, they can't send you packing, as my ex-partner just did. When Tilly was 2 and her sister 4, I divorced her mild-mannered father to live with a woman. I believed she was my long-lost soul mate. She said she felt the same way about me and left her husband, taking along her two teenagers. It was a radical move, by any standard, but I had fallen deeply in love for the first time, at 37, and discovered...