I have held many things in my life.
Holding things is a large part of a mother’s job description.
I have held cumbersome bucket seats, propped on one hip,
as I tried to carry both grocery bags and the baby.
I have held books that have tried and failed to tell me new ways of doing what I was already doing.
I have held newborns, wrapped in thin towels, and carried them from the bath to the bedroom, wet and squirmy,
Sleeping toddlers fresh from the park, smelling of sunscreen and grass, with their skin still warm and sandy.
I have carried trash bags full of unimaginable things I’ve unearthed from beneath a pre-teen’s bed and closet: Things that would have been confusingly easy for them to have just tossed,
but instead, became one with the hardwood.
I have been handed dandelions, and rocks, and surprising worms.
I have held teeth, and held wounds closed until they could be properly bandaged.
I have loaded my arms so full I couldn’t see at the park, trying to hurry because some child said they REALLY had to go to the bathroom.
I have held casseroles, thermometers, forgotten sack lunches,
and triumphantly located missing lovies.
I have held out my hands and caught things no one wants to catch with bare hands,
I have held heartbroken, sobbing teenage daughters.
Yes, holding things is the job of a mother,
And from it I have learned that when you hold something for a long time,
even after you set it down,
for a while, your arms still feel like they are holding it.
Much like still feeling sea legs even once you’re on solid ground,
our brains take a while to get the message.
Maybe it’s a way of easing us in,
God’s way of releasing us back into the wild of ourselves gently.
For years we’ve been used to carrying it all for someone else, so rather than shock us with the sensation of it all ending so fast, He gives us ways to feel like we still hold part of it;
Through memories, photographs, videos saved on our phones…
There are days when their little voices from ten years ago save me.
“I will always have this” is what I told myself on Mother’s Day this year, as my older children now had made other plans for part of the day, and I sat looking at their old pictures, remembering.
All I have to do is look back through my photo albums, and I’m right back on that beach,
or in that sandbox.
I am so thankful for my memories.
Mother’s Day was a weird mix of emotions for me.
Knowing the girls would be gone much of the day doing other things had me trying hard to brush off my own expectations, which proved to be pretty difficult.
I felt a little lonely, and fragile, forced, once again, into a period of time for which I didn’t feel ready.
It wasn’t about the presents, or the cards, or the flowers, because I got all of those things.
I think it was mostly the overwhelming sense of how quickly everything changes.
This is a changing season, after all:
The air outside, the culture, the country, my own reflection…
Now, the two middle ones are getting ready to graduate from high school, and I feel like I’m still calling out, “Slow down” to them, just like I always did, as I look back at their pictures.
In many ways now, I feel like I’m being forced to release huge pieces of everything that has ever mattered;
But still, it is there, weighing and pressing, as real as it ever was.
I can still feel it;
And, just as a young mom struggles to keep it together and act like everything’s fine,
Here I am, trying to smile, and act OK, even on days when I am struggling to keep it together;
As I worry for what their futures here hold, and I wonder if I’ve taught them enough to keep them.
It’s what we moms do, right?
We manage it all.
Our voice says, “Sure. Hand it to me” from inside a mound that is already nearly three stories.
But some nights, when the house is quiet, I secretly cry over the photos of when they had bruised knees, straight across bangs, and holes in their smiles;
Back when they hugged long, and they fought sleep, and they still reached for my hand in public.
Back to mispronounced words, and funny favorite toys,
Back to when their damp heads smelled like strawberries.
Back to when things felt so simple.
I am forever willing to take on more.
I hold out my hand.
After all, I am a mother.
Since they were little it was hard to trust these four to anyone other than my own mom,
but now they are grown, and increasingly gone, and now I am facing having to let them go soon into a world that is churning, too deep, and too violent.
I am passing them, just like when they were infants, into the hands of God,
hoping and praying for their strength, and their safety.
These days I feel so many things:
Exhausted in a way that sleep can’t fix,
Nostalgic for four faces I can now only see hints of,
And still eternally grateful for this beautiful life, and for the way that we have lived and seen it.
I have given them every tool that I have.
I have tried so hard to make the ground level.
Now I just pray for eight steady feet,
knowing that to feel nostalgia and a tugging in your heart is normal for a mom in this phase that I’m in,
Knowing the truth that I learned long ago:
You will always feel anything you’ve held for a long time,
even after you have released it.
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.
