I used to think that I could change my mother's opinion about clothing, about appearance. Since having a daughter, however, I've come to realize that like many issues in parenting, dressing our kids is all about having a voice. More than just the typical parental need to control through what our kids eat and wear, I think my mother was trying to make sure I fit in. I don't blame her -- perhaps she thought if I arrived at that summer party in shorts, I'd be miserable if all the other girls were in dresses. Perhaps if we'd shown up in jeans on Thanksgiving, we might have disrespected our new family.

"I'm going to pick out my clothing for tomorrow," Julia says after the playground, when she's bathed and getting ready for bed. She opens her drawers and gives it real consideration. Leggings? Pants? She settles on a white skirt and tie-dyed blue shirt, polka-dot socks and sneakers. As long as she is weather-appropriate, I don't care what combination she wears. She doesn't know yet that her clothing is different. And the few times she has noticed, she hasn't changed her mind.

My mother is picking Julia up at school tomorrow. Will she notice the outrageous shirt? Wonder why she paired it with a skirt? Maybe. But perhaps she'll also recognize Julia's voice in her outfit, see her determination, her love of color, appreciate her reasons for the skirt ("It's flowy on my legs").

The next afternoon, my mother drops off a nearly asleep but very happy Julia and tells me about their day. "We went for a walk in the park. We picked up leaves and read books. Her skirt is stained. Did she use paints?"

I look at the skirt. "No," I tell her. "I washed it with a blue tablecloth and it ran." I am about to justify myself -- my letting Julia go to school with the stain, my inability to sort clothing for a wash. But I don't. "It's okay, Mom."

My mother smiles and gives me a kiss on the cheek. She takes in my T-shirt (it started the day clean and now has spitup on not one but both shoulders), my jeans (rice cereal on the thigh), my socks (ripped from a nail in the floor). Mainly, she takes in my smile as I hug Julia hello.

"I'm a mess," I tell my mother before she can say it to me. My clothing is the billboard for everything my days consist of now. But they don't tell the whole story. My mother wrestled with piecing together her own life and making sure that her exterior -- and mine -- were always pristine even when things were rocky. Now, with Julia, maybe I don't have to do that.

"You look happy," she grins. "You look like a mom."

Julia wants my attention, wants me to pick her up after her long day. "Can you take the baby?" I ask and hand my 4-month-old over to my mother. She coos over him, and he grants her a smile and then promptly spits up on her. She laughs. "Oh, no. Right on the sweater." She goes to mop herself up.

I wrap my arms around Julia, shifting her weight from my chest to my hip the way I did when she was a baby. I wonder if she will continue to make bold fashion choices, if she will want to stand out or to blend in. I hope I'm giving her the voice to do either, to do what feels best to her. I've read all those articles on the effects of focusing on girls' looks rather than their achievements. And I notice how people say to my boys, "You've got quite a pitching arm there." Or "I heard you playing the piano, wow!" And then to Julia, "Don't you look adorable in your dress!"

"Well, needless to say, I'm going to have to change," my mother says, the baby still in her arms, her sweater darkened with water from the attempt to clean it.

"Look at what I made," Julia says with my mother back in the room. She slides on the floor and goes to her schoolbag. She unfurls a crinkled painting done in splashes of magenta, green, bright blue.

"Was it fun?" I ask. Julia nods. "You sure like to paint. The blue and green remind me of an ocean."

"A big ocean," she agrees.

"And that shirt you have," my mother says. "The one with the design on the front."

Julia nods. "I know that one. Can I wear it tomorrow?"

"Sure," I tell her. "If you want to."

How she looks -- adorable, stained, sweet, slobby, hair brushed or not -- does not mean for me what it meant for my mother. I want to teach her a balance: Sometimes you shove on sweats and other times you need to dress up. But more than all that, I want her to know that my happiness has very little to do with how I look. That my self-worth isn't based on exteriors. That I hope hers isn't, either.

I remember showing up at the party in my seersucker dress and, right now, I recall something else besides my embarrassment. The feel of my mother's hand around mine as we stood in the driveway surrounded by other women and their daughters. How she admitted her mistake and let me change. I squeeze my mother's hand now while Julia's legs are still wrapped around my waist.

"My Grammie is your mom!" Julia says as though no matter how many times she's said or heard the fact, she cannot quite believe it to be true. The three of us, all dressed how we like, are together. My mother and I are marked with the mess of motherhood, the love, the kisses, the paint splotches, the marks and dings of trying to be heard, of being brave enough to let go.

Emily Franklin is the author of Too Many Cooks: Kitchen Adventures with 1 Mom, 4 Kids, and 102 Recipes, a memoir. This essay is from Because I Love Her: 34 Women Writers Reflect on the Mother-Daughter Bond, edited by Andrea N. Richesin and due out this month from Harlequin.