I just received the most unbelievable text message from my dad.

He has my daughter with him at the local park for it’s “Fun Day”, something that my husband and I both did every year as children, and it’s a photo of my daughter holding a trophy with the caption, “Second Place”.

Now let me backtrack a bit.

As I mentioned earlier this week, my daughter is pretty exceptional. She is empathic and wise and an old soul.

But, she is not athletic. (And my love, if you are reading this 15 years from now, know that I could not be more proud of you, and that I am not athletic either and let me take you out for a drink).

In fact, though she met all of her milestones, many of them early, gross motor skills have always been her weak point.

But the thing is, I didn’t know that she knew this.

We are in the business of encouraging her and fostering her talents in the things that she loves and in which she feels confident. We don’t try to get her to be something she is not. And just this morning she and I had a catch.

While she keeps up with her classmates, she certainly is not winning a race. Or so I thought.

Sometimes I wonder if her slowness on the stairs has to do with her glasses, or if she is still just hyper-flexible.

Or perhaps she is just the product of two not particularly athletic parents. Who knows?

Anyway, back to today.

My parents came to take my daughter to the Fun Day (we were under strict orders from her to stay home!) and she was clearly ruminating about the upcoming races.

“You don’t have to race, love,” I told her.

And I told her how I am not good at racing, but how my sister, Mimi, as she calls her, is really good at running, as she runs marathons.

“It is not a competition, it is just about having fun,” she said.

“It doesn’t matter who wins. There is no winner. It’s just about trying,” she continued.

“We can let it scare us but we won’t let it stop us,” she reminded me, using the phrase that we coined earlier this year when we got our ears pierced together.

But, as I told my friend as we were texting about the day’s activities, her insecurities broke my heart a little bit.

She is really good at a lot of things. She is not as good as others. This is reality, and for someone as wise as she is, I think it is OK for her to start learning this inevitability of life.

So she left for the park with my parents, excited to get her face painted (for the second time today), ready to race. I whispered to my dad that he should have her participate in a race for much younger children. I was joking. Kind of.

And so I waited here, working, distracting myself, talking to my sister who, coincidentally, just killed it at a half marathon in NYC, worried and wondering if my daughter would let the ideas of winning or losing or being less than stop her.

And then, the text.

Second place.

In the photo she is holding a trophy, the same kind that I got when I won the softball throw in 5th grade (and yes, that really did happen) and she is beaming, with her face painted as a glittery butterfly.

And just like that, all of my worries dissipated…

…though I can’t say they washed away forever, because this was just one day with one race with one life lesson and I know that there are so many more ahead of us.

Well, wouldn’t you know, my daughter just got home and couldn’t be more proud.

“I can’t believe I won a trophy,” she just said.

She won second place.

And do you know what else I found out ?

There were two five-year-old girls in the race.

But she did it, she mustered up the courage and ran, even though it was hard. Even though it was scary.

And that, to me, is winning.