In 1981, when I had just turned 13, my mother tried to wake me up to watch the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana. It was five in the morning. My brother and sister were asleep. I tried to remain asleep, but mom was insistent. Wake up, she kept saying, you won’t want to miss this.

Because of the time of day and my own circumstances, I very much wanted to miss this. The four of us were on vacation with my mother’s family in Myrtle Beach, and we were staying at a beachside motel, complete with a kitchenette in every room. My eight year-old brother ran wild, having befriended a Canadian who spoke only French. When they were together, which was almost the entire vacation, he spoke to his friend in an oddly accented English, and his friend spoke to him in an oddly accented French. They seemed to understand each other perfectly. My sister was a newborn, and I spent a lot of the vacation caring for her. This was one of the banes of my existence, the fear that my fellow beachgoers would think that I was her unwed teenaged  mother. The other bane of my existence was my slightly older step-cousins, tall, tan blondes in small matching bikinis, all the better to highlight what can charitably be described as the beginning of my awkward stage. Between the cousins and the baby, I was invisible to boys. In the logic of a 13 year-old girl, I felt invisible to the world: small, pale, and red-headed, unable to walk in the sun. To make all of this even worse, as if that were possible, I had a raging ear infection, which my mother treated with a warm washcloth and the occasional Tylenol.

So on the morning of the wedding, I was slightly delirious and in a lot of pain, sharing a bed with my mother, trying to remain asleep despite her constant rousing to watch the royal wedding. I saw parts of it — the hats, the children, the dress, the name mishap — and whenever I have had an ear infection, those parts have played in a slow loop in my mind.

I woke up at five this morning without an alarm, and not because of today’s royal wedding. No, it was my own mom alarm clock, an apparently standard feature installed in my uterus at the time my own children were born. My daughter, small and unbelievably lovely and 19, had to be at the airport at six. She had to catch a flight.

Her last year at home has been difficult. She has been ready to leave but tethered to this place. To her it has, at times, seemed unfair. To me it has, at times, seemed like a delicate balance of loving her and not oppressing her. I have walked on my fair share of eggshells. I have borne the brunt of her frustration, and I have often felt helpless. And in a few shining moments, I have seen the glimpses of the woman she will be, and of the relationship we will have.

She is a brave one, that girl, unafraid and bold and full of adventure. At her age, I recall feeling scared of everything, like I had to ask permission, to overthink, to question incessantly what I really wanted to do. (This was its own awkward stage, one that lasted a mere few decades and finally ended about five years ago.)

But she is not scared, not at all.

She is on a plane right now headed to Bozeman, Montana. For the next three months, she is working in conservation, blazing trails in forests and on mountains, sleeping in a tent. She will be living almost exclusively in brown overalls, like a girlish Super Mario Brother, a voluntary sartorial choice that shocks her fashion-obsessed mother. The state animal of Montana is the grizzly bear, and on Thursday, she attends Bear Training. She will learn to use a chainsaw, to start a fire, to break rocks. There will be big sky, yes, and crushing fatigue. There will be hard work, and fellowship, and a new appreciation for one’s circadian rhythm. It will be an unforgettable summer.

She is not scared, not at all. But her mother is.

It’s not easy to be a mother.

But if I’m being honest, it’s not easy to be a daughter, either. To love someone so furiously, but to have an overwhelming desire not to repeat her mistakes. To carry someone else’s expectations while trying not to buckle from the weight. To be so like another person, yet to be so different.

I am struggling, too, with being a daughter right now. My mother, perhaps the saddest person I know, hurt my feelings terribly this winter, a moment that felt like the final straw, and other than speaking very briefly to her in February and on Mother’s Day, I have had no real conversation with her since December. To me, this decision leaves me feeling free and unburdened. To her, I imagine my decision feels terribly cruel. And she didn’t raise me to be cruel.

I have been watching the royal wedding this morning; since I was up at five, I turned it on. It has been the story of a wedding, to be certain, but it is also the story of mothers and children: the loss of the prince’s mother, the delight that the bride took in the arrival and steady presence of her mother. On the ride to the airport with my own child, I was hardly a steady presence. I burst into a very ugly cry; it started with a gargling choking noise, and then a full body shake, and finally enormous tears. I am proud of her, and it is time to let her go, and it is so hard. As I began to compose myself, my daughter tried to comfort me. Do you think the wedding will be playing in the airport, too? she asked. I told her that I didn’t think there would be any way she could miss it.

So here I am, at home, in my pajamas watching the royal wedding, crying some more. There has been a reminder of the love and the devotion that led to the marriage that brought a son and then a daughter. But in a more basic way, there was one more chance for a shared experience: my daughter, in an airport, waiting to board a plane to take her to Montana, watching a wedding. It would interest her, yes, but not nearly as much as it would interest me. Her take on this wedding no doubt  mirrors my take on the 1981 wedding: She would rather remain asleep. And I can’t help but think that my take on this wedding mirrors my mother’s take in the motel room many years ago: Stay awake. You don’t want to miss this. You can sleep later.

ALC

P.S. — Here is my brave and very happy girl this morning at the airport. If I had any doubt  whether she was doing the right thing (and I didn’t), this picture takes it all away.