One of my daughters turns 18 this week.
She’s the one I think is most like me.
The one my spirit recognized from the first moment I saw her face, when I burst into tears in the delivery room.
The one whose early teenage years were also maybe the most difficult.
She voted for the first time today, since her birthday falls before the election.
A couple of weeks ago, I caught her looking at some shower curtains and bathroom rugs in Target, when she thought I was done looking.
I knew she was dreaming of moving into her first apartment.
This girl is my antique shopping partner.
She is old sweaters and vinyls playing the classics.
Even when her door is closed, the songs that play tell me easily what her mood is.
Tessa has been surprising in every way from the moment we brought her home.
She was quiet and observant as an infant.
Several times we joked we nearly forgot her somewhere because she was so still and silent.
As a toddler, though, she made it clear that she had simply been observing in order to form a master plan of some kind.
Her toddler years revealed she was born to be a leader.
She is NOT still and silent.
Left-handed and creative,
deep feeling and deep thinking.
She loved to make concoctions out of my toiletries.
She is witty, and absolutely hilarious.
From the first moment that we brought her home, I could see she held something unique and special.
She learned to read by age three, started school at 4, and by the end of second grade I was getting called in by the principal and teachers to tell me they thought she should probably skip a grade, because she knew too much.
She was growing bored.
She had “already moved on to teaching all her classmates.”
She graduated at 16-years-old with straight A’s and honors.
She has stayed an achiever, a leader, and one who stands out, but now that she turns 18 this week, I’m feeling like maybe I just rushed her through it.
I find myself wanting the time back.
I want to put her bunny helmet on her.
I want to take her for a bob haircut.
I want the Converse with the rhinestone toes.
I want to tuck her in with her hippo.
I want to hear her and her sister up giggling together long after I turned their light off.
I don’t want her perusing apartment supplies.
I want to walk her down the toy aisle.
She would want the Barbie that looked different from all the rest.
She would want a Nerf gun,
and fake hair extensions.
I want her “Oh well” shoulder shrug that meant everyone had better get on board or get left behind.
I want to hear her voice making everybody laugh.
I want to see her 8-year-old eye sparkle.
I want to watch her digging in the dress-up trunk, and smiling at her own reflection.
When my oldest daughter first moved out, I remember that what absolutely gutted me most was watching her divide our coffee mugs up on the kitchen counter for some reason.
These ones stay….These come with me…
It felt like death by a million papercuts to see it.
She didn’t realize that what she just saw as mugs, I saw as a way we had spent time together, and now that would change.
How could I lock the door at night, knowing she was still out there?
I saw it as her removing pieces of herself from our home, our life, a rupture to the timeline.
I wondered if I had done enough.
If I had built the thing I needed within her.
Would she be safe? Would she lock her own doors?
Would she know who she was, even if others tried to argue?
The sadness and shift in our home sent me quietly to very tearful therapy sessions.
Now this isn’t my first time.
I saw that it wasn’t an end at all, but a new beginning.
It doesn’t mean I don’t feel the tug, though.
Singing “Happy Birthday” this time will feel different.
Soon, she, too, will move on to the part of her life that is separate from me.
I know that she will overachieve.
I know she will have everything she dreams of.
I know she’ll choose the perfect rug and shower curtain no matter what.
I smile, thinking of her in kindergarten.
The teacher had asked each child to fill a brown paper sack with magazine clippings that they felt told about them.
She had put in a bull with a big gold nose hoop, and a picture of a land and water vehicle, and she carried that bag proudly.
For the last 18 years I have poured all I have into this beautiful, amazing person.
She will now carry pieces of me in all she does, even when she cannot see me.
She will spend her years turning those pieces into her own creation,
and then, one day maybe she will pour herself into a little girl that her spirit recognizes.
Maybe she will also cry upon their first meeting.
On and on the story goes:
A mother does what she can, and the daughter uses it to make her own art our of it, like raw material.
I wonder what she’ll make of me…
I know that as I am feeling so much about being left standing in life’s doorway, waving,
she is feeling so much, too.
It takes a lot to know a new chapter is starting.
I hope my girls always know that no matter where they go,
and what parts of home they choose to take with them,
that I will keep the porch light on.
I will keep my mugs ready.
I hope, though, that they will one day also know how often I stood back and watched them dream of things without adding my involvement.
From car drop offs, and from sidelines…
From the backs of auditoriums.
So much of mothering is learning to let go.
It starts just as soon as they no longer want help dressing.
It’s hard, but I believe so much in her.
I’m releasing a butterfly that has unfurled more beautifully than I ever dreamed of.
I wish that I could even express all the thoughts I have about her.
But, in my mind, whenever my girls return to me,
I will still see things like a little bob,
a toothless grin,
a brown paper sack containing their best ideas.
I can’t help it.
I fell so in love with those versions.
I will cheer on the outside, while sometimes still needing a tissue.
I will release them to be an adults, while staying up late looking at their baby pictures.
I will listen to their fears, while knowing they are capable of anything they set their mind to.
And, this week, I will introduce to the world my ADULT daughter,
while inside I know I will be up alone in the dark,
humming a melody about love,
and looking at how her eyelashes lay on her cheek as I slowly rock her.
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.
