The moment my daughter Tessa was first placed on my chest after her birth I cried so much, I can hardly explain it.
My husband snapped a picture of me in that moment, and I can still hear my mom saying a pitying, confused, and very Southern sounding, “Well, Honey,” with her brow furrowed, wondering why exactly I was doing it.
I couldn’t stop, though.
I just felt…overtaken by something almost otherworldly.
For so many years now, there are times with her that take me right back to that moment.
When she was younger and struggling with feelings about her belief that I just didn’t get her,
I once sat her down and thought for a long time about what to say.
Then I thought of that picture.
I began then telling her the story about how after six hours of pretty terrifying labor, they had laid her fresh and warm on my chest, and I absolutely couldn’t stop my tears from the minute I saw her.
I had cried with my two daughters before her,
but the tears with her were so intense;
Well, intense enough to turn into this story.
I went on to tell her that, up until that point,
there, perched on the side of her bed,
I had always thought that it was because my heart and spirit knew something more about her in that first moment than my experiences had yet had a chance to catch up with.
I believed that some part of me that exists outside of space and time fully knew every amazing thing she would grow to be and do.
I already knew she was one I fully believed in.
I told her that I always felt like the power of that inner knowledge had just been too much for my brain to even conceive of, so my body had reacted the only way it knew how, and that was simply to cry,
as a way to relieve it.
Being an artist and a writer, my mind and stories often work in snapshot-like pictures.
I cannot count the number of times in the last 14 years, my mind has settled back on
this very image.
Tessa is a teenager now, and things have not been easy between us.
She is the most like me, the most independent, most outspoken, and bravest.
Because she’s the most like me, I see her try to differentiate the most from me.
Because we are tied so tightly, however,
to me that has often felt like a painful ripping.
Lately I’ve been, once again, unable to shake that picture,
and because of the struggle we’re having,
I have wondered if I got it wrong the first time.
Maybe that image was about something different.
Maybe it wasn’t knowing the depth of her promise, or her spirit.
What if it was the part of me that knew about this part; This struggle, these blows, and this bleeding?
Maybe those tears that day were there as a warning to prepare myself to get ready for all of the pain that was coming.
Tessa and I fought again this morning.
We both said painful things to each other.
I closed myself in my room, and she went to her boyfriend’s without anything more than that she’d see me later.
But then, as I sat there, I again saw that picture…
I texted her that I was coming to her boyfriend’s house to talk, and to please meet me out in the driveway.
I told her our relationship mattered too much to me to just leave it.
For an hour we sat, both of us crying again just like that picture.
I had whispered a prayer the whole drive there that I’d be slow to speak, and eager to fully listen.
I heard my daughter today in new ways,
and she heard me.
Truly. Deeply.
In the end I whispered into her hair that I didn’t want a battle and tears to be our whole story.
Today when I see this picture,
I understand it more fully.
This moment was about feeling every part of being a mother.
It’s not only about the hard battles we would come to face,
or my firm belief in her.
Instead it is about all of our story;
How for six hours I fought hard to birth her from me,
and then for every single day of her entire life after,
I would work to keep her warm, safe, accepted,
and held tightly to me.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
