Yesterday, as we got ready to leave the house for school drop-off, the telephone rang.
Our landline doesn’t ring often anymore, so I found it kind of strange, and when I checked the caller ID, it said “Private Caller.”
My curiosity got the best of me, so I answered it, even though we were running behind, as my 14-year-old, Paige, stood at the door impatiently.
I was surprised to find that the caller was one of her teachers, and I immediately wondered what Paige had done.
She is a character, for sure, but no teacher has ever called me.
However, this teacher went on to pleasantly surprise me by starting my morning off with a list of things that make my child a “delight to teach.”
“She is kind and helpful. She stays on task and helps her fellow students.”
It sounded like she was beaming. I smirked at first and looked for hidden cameras.
She ended by saying that she realized maybe parents would appreciate getting a GOOD call from the school sometimes.
When I mentioned this call to my daughter, she said, “I bet it’s because she’s retiring.”
I pictured her, then, packing up her things, and contemplating the dozens of years of teaching she has done, making sure she had tied up everything.
When Paige got in the car after school that afternoon, she mentioned that during class that day, several kids had been laughing together during an assignment in her class, and she had heard her say under her breath, “I’m going to miss this.”
It gave me a lump in my throat imagining her, having dedicated a life to teaching kids, about to be done.
This teacher is elderly and walks with a limp.
I know she lives alone.
My heart stayed with her in her packing-up phase all day long.
She felt kindred.
I identify with this phase well.
Especially this year, where so much around me feels fleeting or long gone.
Paige will be leaving middle school to start high school, her sisters have graduated, and the soccer team she has been with for years is in their final season.
(Not to mention that, for as long as I can remember, May has always been a “letting-go” month)
We pack things away.
We say things that have previously been left unsaid.
We hope we’ve done enough. It’s an age-old cycle.
I contemplated the excitement for new seasons to come, while grieving the end of the last one, and how it took a while for me to realize the two things often exist together.
On the same night as the call, Paige’s soccer team gathered for their second-to-last practice ever.
Her team is splitting into separate leagues because of a new age cutoff and some changes in the coaching. The thought of it has been bittersweet. I have loved getting to know these girls. They have become an extension of my family.
The team chose to meet this time at the park with real grass, different from the turf fields they usually play on.
It was the same park where Paige had first played soccer when she was just beginning, and there is just something to going back to the start of it all, and remembering where you came from.
As they played, I stood on the hill overlooking them, and my heart started that same quiet double-sided aching.
I looked around me at the way the golden hour blanketed the sunlight over the fields, and turned the mountains a hazy purple.
I saw the siblings of the players, who have now become somewhat of a team themselves, off playing in the distance.
This is when I took out my own mental notebook and recorded the moment for all-time, scratching into my mind’s pages
“The Last Few Practices in the Park at Sunset.”
I made a note, hoping to remember the way they all laughed and kicked off their shoes in a pile so they could play barefoot.
It is indescribable how it feels to watch your daughter grow through sports;
How you learn to see her differently because of it.
She was nervous, now she is bold.
She was new, now she is seasoned.
She wondered if she would be good enough at those first try-outs,
now she knows she can try anything.
Then I looked over at the faces of the other moms sitting beside me, and recognized the same look on their faces, of taking it all in, holding their breath, too, as we set out on the unknown that spreads in front of us.
The trees around us felt like they stood as witnesses more than just trees last night.
Those same trees that have taken in child after child, then passed them out into the world, stronger and more confident.
They have shaded many of those same children as babies, supported them hanging from their limbs, provided Hide-and-Seek protection.
They have also stood through soccer try-outs, then through many following games, and still as the ones who were once babies turned into lanky athletes.
They, too, stood still on the hill and observed the changing of the seasons in thoughtful silence.
I remember this same field when I was also young, carefree, and barefoot.
Last night, it felt like that whole park was reminding me that the memories are safeguarded.
It knows how women who care for children always feel like the golden moments are too fleeting.
How one day they are surrounded by the laughter of little ones,
and the next, they are packing things away in boxes.
It knows we get a little achy about the sunsets of child-raising,
whether we are the mothers, the coaches, the old trees, or the long-time teachers.
In a way, that list is our own team, laying it all out on the field together;
Giving our all to this game and to one another.
So, I say “Thank you” to my teammates in this life, as this season I have cherished so much is ending.
Thank you to the ones who have helped raise my kids alongside me.
Thank you for helping me make it through every hard push of May,
and every painful lurch towards September.
Thank you to the ones who put in the work so my kid could be labeled a “delight” and a “kind helper.”
That wasn’t just me. That was the hands and hearts of so many.
We have won and lost and grown in so many ways.
Good game, Dear ones.
The love that goes into raising our children becomes their sunlit branches.
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.
