Something quite beautiful

One of my dearest friends and I have something (one of many, many things) in common. We both adore pieces of writing that give us girly-emotional-goose-bumps. While sipping on a cup of coffee and 'chewing the cud' after work one evening, C read me the letter below.

Boy, did it make the hairs on my arms stand up. Not so much because of the 'cute' factor (being a letter from a dad to a daughter, written for a later date) but because- bar some of the more personal details- this is what my dad instills in me. Not in this form, a letter for me to read, but in a much better way - just by being my dad.

The way this is written reminds me of another piece of writing that my dad introduced me to- Desiderata. It has the same rhythm to it and the same sentiment... Be the best version of yourself that you can possibly be. Be good. Be kind. Be human. And be true.


I hope that you enjoy this letter as much as I did, and still do. I might just save it in a safe place to read to my daughter one day, to add to all of the other lessons I will have learned by then.

Letter to a daughter

Small thing, tiny blob, little fat muncher in a romper suit, blessed with your mother’s sexy lips, your grandpa’s mischievous eyes and your father’s relaxed approach to table manners. Twitching with glee in the warmth of a sunbeam in your baby ‘gym’ on the floor, baffled by the dangling cow and the squeaky sheep and the pig that rattles like a bell (and frankly, who wouldn’t be?) – are you really going to read this letter one day?

At the moment, no years old and just learning to gurgle, it’s hard to imagine you will ever be able to talk, let alone read. But if you’re reading this, then I guess you learned in the end. And that’s a great start. Reading and writing are everything. Language is power. Books are beauty. I hope you don’t grow up playing video games, watching endless television, and speaking in street slang like a moron, peppering your hip inarticulates with ‘like’ and ‘you know’. I will still love you of course, but I will be silently drowning my disappointment in gin. At the moment you are beautiful, and I hope you remain so. It will make everything much easier. I hope you are so damned beautiful that boys are afraid to come near. But not so beautiful that other girls hate you. So dress down, avoid high fashion (which is for fools), go easy on the make-up (until you are old and hiding lines) and twist your long hair up with a pair of knickers when you’re cooking because I knew a very beautiful girl who did that once, and it was the best thing I had ever seen.

And for God’s sake, do cook. Cooking a meal for yourself, or for someone you love, is one of the great joys, and bashing pots does not make you a drudge or a reactionary or a slave just because you are a woman. Be a feminist by all means, earn a living, boss the room, wear trousers, drink hard, drive like a nutcase, but don’t think that to be a modern woman you must aggressively reject everything that women used to do and stand for once upon a time. So don’t be afraid to clean. It is a strange world where men can feel relaxed about doing the housework but women feel like traitors to a cause. Putting on a pair of rubber gloves or wielding a Dyson doesn’t turn an Emmeline Pankhurst into a Mrs Beeton. And allow yourself to be gentle, kind and forgiving, without thinking of such things as weaknesses.

When it comes to working for a living, just get on with it. Work because you need money or because you can do some good but don’t do it because you think ‘having a career’ means anything at all. And if you want to work, and you marry a man who doesn’t care or you turn out to have a rich daddy, then don’t work. Chill, read, eat, have babies, walk in the park. It’s what I would do. It’s what I do do. And it would be great if you didn’t grow up into one of those women who are always tired. Mend tend to be awake or asleep but women so often seem to be somewhere in between. It’s a bore.

Don’t get fat if you can possibly help it – because really it’s nothing more than moral turpitude. But don’t be one of those insanely skinny women who are always poking their food around their plate and claiming to have an allergy.

Know how to accept a compliment – don’t gloat on it or throw it back but receive it like a gift. And don’t smoke, because that’s over now and by the time you are 14 or 15 and thinking about it a packet of smokes will be so expensive, maybe R900.00. (In fact you are probably reading this and thinking only R900.00?)

And if you are beautiful and therefore cool and popular at school, then be on of those ones who also has nervous, dorky or ugly friends and is never mean to girls less fortunate that herself because you saw that kind of thing on telly and think it is how you ought to be – it’s not. Be nice to coat check girls and always smile at waitresses. The chances are you will never have to have a job like this or at least not for very long – so the least you can do is be nice to the people that do (Your mother made me put that in and if you turn out just the same as her, you will be all I could ever hope for).

Daisy Buchanan, the spoilt femme fatale of the Great Gatsby and no sort of role model for you, says of her toddling daughter in the novel, ‘I hope she’ll be a fool. That’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool’. And she is not as wrong as she sounds (though I’d say the same of a boy). It is good to be clever and wise but it is not important. And simpler people sometimes have a better time of it, because they are not forever ramming their intellect down other’s throats to get some value from all that learning they did when they could have been having fun.

So be clever and know things, but be cool about it. Don’t go on. People won’t assume you’re an idiot just because you’re a girl – we’re past that now – so it’s OK at dinner parties to sit quietly sometimes, and not always be fighting for your opinions. It’s rude to talk about serious things anyway. Everyone’s out to just tell jokes.

Source: UK Marie Claire- July Issue

Love and Gratitude

xxx