We waited against the wall of the bagel shop for our names to be called.
All she had asked was that we go there in the morning.
Outside was grey from the fog.
The gloomy sky seemed to match the mood of your 14th birthday landing in the midst of a pandemic.
No birthday party, nothing much really planned.
We grabbed our bagels from the counter then just went back home, silent.
Every year Chloe’s birthday plans get threatened, it seems;
Whether by flood, or some winter-time illness.
Somehow it always seems grey, and not what we’d hoped.
This year was proving no different.
But the ache in me was greatest this year, after the last months she has been having.
The isolation of the pandemic has hit this girl so hard, and it has chipped away at her.
Threatened to change her.
She’s lost weight, and color.
She so often seems sad.
I have struggled with how to best reach her.
It’s like I will always cry and wait to see this girl.
Like our beginning set us forever in circle motion.
We ate our bagels together on the couch, and I asked her to come with me on a walk up the street, just us two.
I wanted to take her picture to document 14.
I was hoping that I’d capture something to make her see some of the beauty inside her.
The ocean in her eyes,
How her hair almost tells a story,
the girl that I know her to be.
I remember the night that Chloe was born.
It was late, and Justin was snoring beside me in the chair of the hospital room.
His body was almost folded in half. I felt jealous of his easy sleeping.
I knew that I should have been sleeping, too, but after so much praying,
and waiting, and heartbreak trying to have this baby, along with a devastating miscarriage before,
I just wanted to look at her.
Feel the weight of her.
I remember reaching over to the still little bundle laying in the bassinet on my left.
I had worried I’d wake her by reaching in, but I was surprised that when I raised her up to me, to see that her eyes were wide open, and immediately they locked on my own.
At that moment, there in the dark,
in that room lit only by the moon,
the sight of such big, fixated eyes made me pull back.
I remember feeling kind of shocked by what I was seeing.
Something otherworldly was looking at me,
and I felt like she knew something I was yet to know.
It wasn’t what I was expecting to see.
None of her would be, I would find,
as I never imagined the baby I’d prayed for would throw massive toddler tantrums,
and would refuse to be consoled.
I never imagined that that little bundle would grow to suffer years of crippling anxiety,
and I’d worry that, because of its grip on her, her dreams would never come to be.
But mostly what I never imagined was that everything that she would go through to get her here to this walk on our street would shape her into the most amazing, loyal, nurturing, and empathetic girl.
Somehow, her pain had made her unfurl.
I never imagined that those eyes, wide open in the dark that night, would grow to become a symbol for what she has become to me, and that sometimes when I’m struggling I see that night in my mind
and remember when God gave something I didn’t know I needed to me.
A helper. A friend. A lifter of loads.
Chloe sees people.
She sees through the dark.
People always comment on her eyes.
Chloe lays still, and breathes soft, and looks past all of the darkness you’re in.
Chloe reminds you where the light is no matter how blind you feel.
I took the photos of her that day and at first she hated them all.
She sees others, but has so much trouble seeing her own beauty.
As I showed her each one I reminded her that her very name means
“Verdant and blooming.”
I reminded her to push through and be who she IS.
Eyes open.
Keep right on seeing.
I have worried so much about the kids this year.
I’ve worried how they’d take in the world now,
and how they will hold it.
But telling this story is Chloe carrying me back to that hospital room in the dark,
asking me to trust who she was made to be,
and then just letting her be it.
Quiet, aching girl, with eyes like the sea,
may you know that I’m always here on the shore
looking towards the horizon,
and all that you are
like we’re back in that dark room,
eyes locked, once more;
And when your feet got tired,
know I saw that you flew.
These hard times,
like all the others, will fall behind you.
May your roots continue deeper,
May all your dreams be realized,
And may you never forget that you were made
– and even named –
“To Bloom.”
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.
