It is the end of my last year ever mothering a middle schooler.
I made it.
(I almost feel like I should be saying this in a room with a circle of chairs set up for group therapy)
Four times I have waded through the mine-field of Jr. High, and I have come out with all my limbs in tact, miraculously. I have a few scars, and walk with a limp, but, still I rise, victorious.
For 15 years now, I have done school drop-offs while counseling a child over something or another. Eyes have been rolled at me. I have listenend through friend issues, and last week,
I even went all over town looking for items to make a flour-sack baby directly following my own urgent care appointment.
Before I had even gotten my antibiotic, I was deciding on which knee highs would make the most realistic infant.
That sums up motherhood in a nutshell.
I can only guess that me being the one to be given all girls, while my brother had all boys had something to do with payback for the way we were as children.
He was innocent, quiet, a perfectly behaved son.
I was outspoken, a little wild, and liked to rub his buzz-cut backwards with a rubber mail sorting thumb cover as a form of torture.
So, I think, God answered my mom’s prayers that one day we’d be given kids just like us,
And he was given four mild-mannered sons, while, not only did I get one, but FOUR daughters; chalk full of drama, hormones, and opinions.
I bet God smiled thinking about me having to manage four of them through middle school,
and then fell right out of His chair laughing, knowing the most dramatic one would be the last one.
A Grand Finale.
But, here I am with two days left before that final daughter is officially in high school.
My oldest is married with her second baby on the way, and the two after her are both graduated and in college and working.
Now we go out with a bang with the one we enrolled in martial arts, and sports, and taught to boldly share her opinions.
The one who got way too excited the day she learned to use a nail gun.
This one feels like when you have raised three Mouseketeers to suddenly realize your final one is more of a Chuck Norris.
Everything she does is big, bold, and impossible to forget.
One of my friends made stickers and sweatshirts out of her image. She’s iconic.
On Sunday we attended a picnic in the park for graduating eighth grade students and their families. The kids all ditched us the moment we arrived there, and went as far away as possible, until it ended up looking like we were playing a giant game of Red Rover, and the only thing the teens would come over for was the dessert table.
The parents sat in scattered lawn chairs, dazed off into the distance.
Every mom there had a look in her eyes that I could recognize as “Weary Warrior.”
It was a look of every known emotion.
Excitement to be done with some really challenging years,
Still feeling sadness over the quickness.
Worry, Joy, Relief, and a big dose of End-of-May exhaustion.
So much time an energy spent…
Now I head into summer, realizing it’ll be my last “kid summer” ever.
I know from experience that once high school starts, summers change, irreversibly.
She’ll be gone off with friends, and I’ll be tracking her with my phone, wondering what exactly she’s doing on the trail behind the hospital.
Soon she’ll be driving, and hardly ever home just like her sisters.
This season is so bittersweet.
It feels like I’m holding my girls’ childhoods by the very tip of the tail.
Right now I keep seeing a lot of talk of giving our kids a “90’s summer.”
The thought feels alluring to me. I’d love to unplug, and just spend two months watching sunlight flicker off the river with her. I’d love to look at stars, and braid her hair, and put on Hawaiian Tropic.
I’d give anything for her to know the smell of a Blockbuster.
I wish she could know the way life felt before social media existed.
But, I also know I hardly came home ever during a 90’s summer.
I traveled in a 10 person pod our teachers called “The Crew,” because we never went anywhere without one another.
We spent the night at each other’s houses all laid out on the floor in piles like puppies.
We existed on slurpees and taco truck burritos.
It was absolutely magical….and I do want her to have it,
just not yet.
Just not this summer, maybe.
This summer I still want her running through sprinklers.
I still want to be there for her popsicles and pool parties, needing me to put on the sunscreen, and reminding her to please drink some water.
Yes, the moods of middle school were a lot.
Yes, there were times I wanted to scream into a pillow,
but it was much too quick that I was suddenly sitting in a park, looking around at other parents of graduating eighth graders, realizing it would be the last time I ever sat in that kind of space with one of my children.
Frantic feeling life,
Then suddenly….It isn’t.
Saying goodbye and packing up my chair that night felt like the end of more than just a picnic.
What a crazy thought that the years you end up most nostalgic for could be the years you felt like you were barely surviving.
I never would have believed that toddlerhood and middle school would be the two ages I’d feel most attached to.
Not “terrible” twos.
Not “horrible” teens.
Challenging. Interesting.
Never boring.
I put my head down and swam with all my might to stay afloat through both of those seasons with four girls.
The waves tossed me.
But, now I sit on the shore panting, realizing that I made it through.
I reached the end, and, as funny as it is,
I know I’ll somehow find myself missing still being in the water.
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.
