I went for a walk with my daughter, Tessa, last night along the trail by our house.
We’ve been trying to go every night, really hyping each other up to prioritize fitness this summer by telling each other what absolute rock stars we are, and how people won’t even recognize us, we will be so incredibly in shape by the time that summer is over.
(See: More like exactly the same, because we sometimes leave the trail and head to the grocery store for secret peanut M&Ms)
Really, it is just an excuse for us to spend alone time together.
We’ve discussed many things as we’ve been walking these last several weeks.
We’ve laughed, and fallen in love with how the dappled light looks as the sun sets out there across the orchards and vineyards.
We shake our heads at how we can hear our dog barking from a mile away across the valley that echoes, and how we can tell that it’s definitely him by his ridiculous racket.
Last night we got started talking about how soon summer will be over,
and that (even though she is still only 15) because of skipping the third grade, she will be starting her last year of high school: An actual senior.
She grew quiet as we talked about it more.
True friends have been scarce, and her boyfriend of over two years plans to go away to college.
Whereas her older sister (who will also be a senior) is excited about the prospect of freedom, and focused on things like prom, and senior ditch day,
Tessa ponders things much more deeply in her heart.
When I looked over at her in stride with me on the path,
I could see that she was frozen in front of a great divide, emotionally.
“I don’t want to be a senior. I’m actually kind of scared,” she quietly said.
The sound of her voice, almost like a prayer, got lifted up into the canopy by the breeze,
and scattered into the world the same way she looked scared she, herself, would be:
Just carried away, never to be seen again.
As my boldest one, normally, the word “scared” surprised me.
Just a year ago, pulsing with young teen hormones and emboldened by all the slammed doors, I’m assuming, it seemed like she would do anything – even catch a south-bound train with only a knapsack and a can of beans in her possession – just to get away from me.
But, on this night, after talking some more,
I realized that the bottom line is that she is feeling a thing that I’ve been contemplating as a recurring theme in all of life lately –
She is afraid to move into a brand new phase that is so different from anything she has experienced yet.
The Unknown always feels like one of our biggest enemies.
Once she crosses that stage at the end of this next school year, and is handed that diploma,
the world becomes one big question mark formed of pressures from all sides, and she just isn’t ready for it.
We wound around corners, past blackberry bushes and onto the sun-lit clearing,
which seemed like the perfect backdrop for the words, both spoken and unspoken, that I was hearing.
I talked to her about things I remember from when I was her age, facing out towards my own future, facing the same mysteries and fears.
Then I told her the thing I have realized is a theme of life for so many people, especially if you are the type that notices the small things, and feels things deeply.
I told her the same thing I’ve told my oldest daughter, who is now mourning the too-swift passage of time that happens in your baby’s first year of life, when they grow much too fast for your liking, when that one pair of footie pajamas you loved so much no longer fits them…
The same thing I’ve told myself hundreds of times now, especially as I face this new stage of life where my old skills aren’t needed or wanted by my family as much,
and there’s a ME, who I am at my core,
to re-discover:
“So much of life is not feeling ready.
I feel it with you girls so often.
But the thing you can’t know until you’re in the space where the unknown USED to be
is that, even though everything might look different than it used to,
there is still so much good waiting for you up ahead in what, right now, just looks like darkness.”
Her voice had fallen silent.
She wiped tears, and I stopped talking when I noticed them.
My girl has a whole universe waiting for her, and the doorway is within view now.
It’s so close, she can almost touch the handle.
As she reaches for it, though, her hand a lip quiver a little bit. It is a surprise to her.
I slipped my arm around her as we walked on.
Then I said the most important thing all my years of mothering have taught me I could ever say to any of them:
“I love you, Honey.
No matter what comes next, I’ll always be here.”
There, right beside her
on every trail.
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.
