I scrolled on Facebook, and stopped dead on the picture.
My oldest daughter, Alena, had just posted a couple of shots of her and her nearly 2 year old daughter, Mavis.
They were sitting on the couch together drinking hot cocoa.
It was Mavis’ first time to try it: A big moment, worthy of documenting, by any mom’s standard.
I smiled at their cute expressions, and the way that Mavis held her tiny Starbucks cup with both hands like she was much older.
It’s so cute to try to look official with dimpled knuckles.
People were loving the photos. Many “like”s were pouring in.
“She’s so cute,” “What a doll,” “What a cutie,” were the comments.
Of course I thought all of those same things.
Mavis has taken my life by storm.
There is nothing better on earth than being her Grammy,
but those specific photos did something to me.
They evoked smell, feel, and powerful memory;
Because, while those photos were meant to draw people’s attention to Mavis, and this cute little scene to kick off the holiday season,
my attention was drawn to Alena,
my very first daughter.
When Alena was small, I was a single mother.
Times were hard. Money was tight. We lived in a tiny upstairs apartment that was more fit for mice than for people, if you based it on square footage.
I worked full time at a medical office then, and my days were long and stressful.
I came home exhausted after driving across town to get her from her daycare provider, with just enough time to frantically make dinner, and put her in the bath, and then in bed, so that the next day I could do it all over.
During the week I barely got any quality time with her.
In those days dishes were hardly ever done, and my memory tells the story of them stacked in the sink like an un-scalable tower.
I remember us giggling together as she would run from the bath every night the few steps it would take to get to the wall heater, and she would stand there to warm herself, smiling at me.
My memories of those years take place in after-dinner memories that felt far too rushed, and fleeting.
She didn’t know we were poor, or that I was so stressed I was barely resting.
In those days I tried to make her think I could handle it all, even though inside I felt so stretched I thought I would crumble. I cried a lot. I showed up at my parents’ house with overnight bags often. I went to therapy.
Still, we sang songs, and read books, and planted flowers in the postage stamp yard that was protected by a tall fence, blocking out the city life all around us.
That little square of green surrounded by chaos felt like a picture of the life I was trying to carve out for us.
Still, I found time, when I could, to do everything within my power to make sure she only remembered having a loving, strong, and nurturing mother.
A part of that effort involved creating little “nothing-seeming” traditions,
one of which was stopping every morning before I dropped her off at daycare at Starbucks for a kid’s hot chocolate.
All the baristas knew her.
Every single morning, I’d unhook her from her carseat, and walk her inside, holding her hand, to get her that hot chocolate. I remember her red hooded coat. I remember her bob hairstyle.
Every single day she would end up spilling some in the car.
It became a joke the way my back seat had so many hardened brown splatters,
but it was a thing that she loved.
It was time that we spent.
It was a thing I could give her.
I can remember how gutting it was to have to leave her the first day of daycare.
She was only 6 weeks old.
You could barely see her head in the carseat, and I cried having to turn away from looking at her sitting in the daycare provider’s kitchen, knowing I wouldn’t be back until it was dark to get her.
All I wanted for my entire life was to be a mother. Now I was one.
It was just me and her, a two-person team, and it hurt so much to have to leave her.
Those stops for hot chocolate became our morning Founder’s Meeting.
For a brief moment in time, we got to stop rushing.
It was just me and her then, hand-in-hand, starting another day smiling at each other.
The years passed, hot cocoa to hot cocoa, and things got easier for us.
We both grew. I met my husband. It was no longer just the two of us in a tiny apartment.
Before long I was married, and I would go on to have three more daughters,
but the years when it was just me and her….
Those years are irreplaceable in my memory.
No gift of mine has ever been greater.
Being her mother in those years when it was just the two of us shaped me in ways I cannot even record on paper.
No hand I have ever held has symbolized transformation, joy, and true success in the way that hers has, and now, she has her very own first daughter.
I keep the knowledge of the ways it will shape her to myself, locked away with misty eyes and a slight smile.
I look at her now and, through the pride I feel in this version of her, I still see that same little girl with her daily hot cocoa.
We survived some hard times.
We have stories that belong just to the two of us.
Those were not just pictures on my screen, they were a powerful symbol of love,
and of the power in storing up small-seeming moments.
Any mother who has been one a while knows that it’s exactly that kind that end up making up your whole story.
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.
