My youngest turned 14 today.
She has always been a fiery one.
Though she is taller and more mature now, I know at least that spark in her will never change.
Paige was born at 5:00, on the nose, on a Friday: “Party time and Quitting Time,” we always say. She was born to be a world-changer. I could literally see that from the very first day I laid my eyes on her, just by her skeptical-looking, take-no-nonsense kind of face.
When she was born, she was soft and quiet.
Her eyes squinted as she looked around, and – now that she is a young teen – I have come to believe maybe that was because she has always been silently judging me.
Knowing she would be my last baby, I held her a little tighter and looked a little longer.
I studied each fingernail. I memorized her little feet.
Our first couple of months were so dreamy and lavender scented,
but then I got sick.
The doctors said it was the biggest blood clot any of them had ever seen.
It spanned from my knee up into my abdomen, and I would need to be hospitalized and have a filter put into my main vein so it didn’t break off and kill me right away.
I was rushed to the hospital before anyone in my family could get there to meet me,
and before I knew it, I was on a cold metal table, more scared than I have ever been,
begging the doctor to please not let anything happen to me.
I had a brand new baby and three other daughters at home. Please.
It was three days of terror and hardly being able to sleep.
I had to stop nursing her because of the medicine they put me on.
I remember how that made my chest and heart ache.
My husband would bring her to visit, and I’d put a smile on, but inside I was so worried I wouldn’t be there to see her grow up.
They would leave for the day, and I would cry myself to sleep.
The doctors told me I could go home after three days in the hospital, now that the filter was in place, but then, mere days later, they would find that another clot had formed on top of that filter. There was no protection from that one. No guarantees, or anything more they could do.
All I could do was pray, hold my baby, and wait.
At home, no mother can be a patient. Dinner and baths needed to still happen.
The kids all needed me.
My husband was back to work after her birth, so once the older girls were dropped off at school, it was just her and me: Her blinking, like “What now?”
Me, breathing shallow, and listening to the clock tick.
I spent those weeks terrified to move, worried the clot would break free.
I pictured her left alone in a house, crying for hours until her dad pulled back into the driveway.
I didn’t like to drive for fear of the same thing.
My mind was plagued with the possibility of sudden death with her in my care.
The terror in those days was overwhelming. It infiltrated every thought. It made it hard to celebrate the future. All I could do was keep taking one hesitant step at a time.
I had to keep caring for her no matter what. I had to keep going.
There was a choice to be made: I could sit frozen and let those days be stolen,
or I could force myself to do whatever needed to be done.
I made my choice then: Keep going. She depended on me.
Make the bottle, find the pacifier, give a bath, see if her diaper needs to be changed.
I couldn’t freeze up and do nothing out of fear.
I just held her in the chair and did it all scared, day after day.
This meant days of just holding her up close to me, almost like a security blanket, looking at her face, hoping she never knew the kind of fear that kind of health crisis brings.
I kept on pushing forward, through tears and panic attacks,
until one day I had finally healed, and, like the sun breaking through after a storm,
the whole thing was suddenly mostly behind me.
I have come to realize that those early days with her, spent like that, made me even view her a certain way:
The one that kept me moving forward, the one who convinced me I could do it if I just kept my eyes on her face.
They changed me.
They taught me about the power we have to do what we have to do, even if we are afraid;
Even if the terror takes over so much that we think we can’t move or breathe,
we can take the next step,
then the next,
and before we know it, we will have gotten through the whole thing.
Those days built in me a belief in myself I didn’t have yet, and they caused me to view her entire life and even her purpose in a certain way. I knew right then that she was born to inspire and lead.
Today, as we celebrated her life around our family dinner table,
as we sang “Happy Birthday,” and we all ate cake,
I contemplated how the picture of who we were then is still happening today.
These days there are so many scary things happening that could threaten to freeze me.
I get scared for all of the things in this new world that my girls could face.
I feel sad for the love lost between people in this country, and how easy it is to hide behind keyboards and let the verbal destruction rain.
Some days the kind of future I hoped for them feels extra hard to see,
but, just like back then, I parent them all with faith anyway.
I button them up to send them out and tell them I believe in them, no matter what they face.
I can see the current reality,
but still prepare them for the type of future I want for them anyway.
One step at a time, one moment at a time, I hold them all to me tight,
and remind myself to breathe.
I look at them so often as if it’s just them and me.
I go back in my mind to a thing I read once, talking about all the great heroes of history, and how each was born into their own respective eras as if there was no other time they could have possibly been in; Almost as if the moment itself created and called to them down through time, with their specific talents and abilities that were needed, saying, “Come here to me.”
This thought gives me comfort. They will be OK. I have done all I can to instill in them kindness, faith, and a moral compass, even when it’s felt like the entire world has fought me to do it.
They will not be left defenseless.
They have everything they need.
Today I look to my fiery one and see a warrior who has been preparing for this exact future from the very first day when she showed up scowling in the delivery room like she really couldn’t believe THIS was her family.
Like a tiny leader, telling me to pull it together and look into her face;
To know it was all going to be OK.
They are all still moving me,
still giving me a reason to keep fighting through every dark looking day.
“A child shall lead us”
I will keep holding my children to me, and they will keep me going,
because this moment is what they were born for;
Moving, always moving forward, through whatever will be.
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.
