As soon as I saw that my youngest daughter, Paige, had fixed herself breakfast on Sunday morning by spreading a half of a family-sized bag of Ruffles out on the entertainment cabinet like a charcuterie board,
I really knew she was beginning to crack.
While I, myself, have long-tasted the mental fullness of quarantine,
the girls had been holding on pretty well,
with only little moments where their pain has showed through.
I’ve tried to keep them entertained.
For the most part I’ve kept them at home, which showed in Tessa’s outside-life-starved review of her only trip to Target in three months:
“I know it might just be because I’ve been nowhere,” she said,
“but that trip to Target today felt epic.
I mean, today I stood in the MAGNOLIA SECTION, people.
I saw it with my own eyes.
Like, what am I? A QUEEN?!
I tell you – I almost blacked out.”
However,
while the middle schoolers have giggled their way through this together,
one not paying close enough attention might have missed seeing the little one beginning to fall through the crack.
Paige is my fierce one.
Even at 8 years old she is the one who squares her shoulders the most.
Normally she can be seen at the head of a pack of boys.
Playing dress up just isn’t for her.
From the age of two she begged to take karate, even though she still had a diaper on.
Once she started lessons she moved up 4 belts within months,
and she once gripped her 5th degree blackbelt karate instructor’s neck in a hold so tight that he had to tap out.
The look in her eyes afterwards was one I will never forget, and hope to see again.
Paige was born at 5:00 on the dot.
We always say she is quittin’ time and party time all rolled into one,
but the quarantine has taken something out of her.
Her voice somehow doesn’t carry as loud.
She is crying more.
She is angry more.
She says “I’m just not hungry tonight.”
By the time I had to break the news to her that her beloved dojo was losing its lease through all of this, I noticed she barely had a response anymore.
I wondered if her words had sheltered where her eye contact did.
When I asked her, beginning to feel worried,
if it would make her feel better to FaceTime some friends, she burst into tears saying that if she couldn’t play with them she didn’t want to see their faces at all.
This Friday we broke quarantine and went to my oldest daughter’s house to see her brand new kitten, Quill.
She and Paige, though 13 years apart, have always shared a special bond, but Alena got married last year and her absence in our home has been felt.
For Paige one more thing from which to move on.
We stayed an hour just sitting in a circle on Alena’s floor, and when we left you would have thought we had spent the entire time handing Paige the moon.
She talked about that outing, that small little thing, for two days straight after that,
making me realize how desperately she had needed to feel like she had something to do.
Later, when I messaged Alena to tell her the impact that time had made,
she asked if I thought Paige would like to come Monday for a full day at her house just by herself.
Just the two of them.
The look in her eyes when I told Paige this plan was enough to bring me to tears.
I know they talk about watching light come back in,
but I’d never watched a flame jump quite so noticeably as that.
That night she went about picking an outfit.
She folded it as well as an eight year old can and laid it out on her shelf.
She told me how she would want her hair done.
She placed her brand new shoes, ready,
by her bed.
She told me that she planned to sleep in extra long the next day to make the time until she was picked up go by fast,
and when pick-up time came you have never seen a person get ready like that.
ALENA: “Wait. Are those your socks from the trampoline place under your shoes? How can that be comfortable?”
PAIGE: “It isn’t. Now let’s go.”
To Alena this offer she had made had been a simple thing –
Maybe a few treats and a day of some video games;
But to this little girl who had been feeling the pain of her normal draining slowly away without knowing what to say or how,
this day was like a wound balm.
That afternoon Alena texted a picture –
It was Paige on her couch with the new kitten cuddled in one arm and a video game controller in the other.
Nothing super special to most onlookers,
only to a mother’s heart
it was everything.
“Her real smile,” I said softly to myself.
“It’s her real smile.”
Not the one when she is told to “Say cheese.”
Not the one when she’s being polite.
Not the one when she meets someone new.
Her real, missing for awhile now smile,
there because her sister had just given her one of the most precious things going these days:
Something to look forward to.
This article was written by a guest blogger. The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not reflect the opinions of Bob Lacey, Sheri Lynch or the Bob & Sheri show.
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.
