My oldest daughter sighed today and I could see it.
Nearly 21 and her faces are still the same.
She is newly, and very happily married to the most wonderful man,
and she even has a home of her own;
But in her eyes I could see the pleading look of my same first little girl
just needing a small slice of childhood home
even if it meant hearing her sisters fighting.
A few hours of not feeling so alone.
So many big things to be facing within this Married Year One.
It is hard to know how to manage living in a pandemic, when you’re still learning to manage little things like what to do when your husband spits his toothpaste all over the bathroom mirror.
So I smiled at her,
and I made her smile, too.
An inside joke.
The bringing up of an old memory.
A reminder that some things in life will always be here for her, like me;
That so much was different but she could
rest-assured that some things would never change.
In my youngest it has showed up as anger.
She has been kicking a lot at the dirt.
She says it’s not fair.
She calls us all rude.
She sits outside with only the cat,
and her frequent tears about all kinds of injustice leave tracks down her dirt-powdered face.
Today I made note of my middle girl most.
Her eyes had hardly looked up at me all day.
They’d been on her phone,
and they’d been on the TV,
but mine had been on her,
and I had noticed that today
she just did not seem OK.
After an explosion during dinner,
mad at me about something I had not even done,
I sat across from 11 year old, Tessa,
and simply asked her,
“Honey, what’s wrong?”
Immediately her face pressed hard into her hands and I could see tears begin leaking through the cracks between her fingertips as a flood of emotions came spilling from the dam that small seeming question had chipped its way through.
“What’s wrong?”
So easy to ask,
but so hard to answer.
The amount that had clearly been building up in her surprised me as
“I just feel so sad today,” she sobbed.
“And also I am feeling really scared.
I feel like I just want our old life back.
I’m worried that it is gone forever!
What’s wrong?!
What’s wrong is EVERYTHING!
Everything.
That is what’s wrong!”
Her sobs shook her shoulders.
They felt like they shook mine, as well.
I stayed silent as she then unloaded weeks worth of built-up feelings that had been hidden with a shroud of snack eating and recording of Tik Tok videos;
And then I did what we moms have always done,
one thing unchanged,
I asked her to show me where it hurts.
The emotional owies that she needed kissed today were many.
She did as children do,
and pointed to ones that I could hardly see.
She had finally made a group of friends at school after years feeling lonely.
She had only gotten to go to one dance.
She didn’t like the feeling of not knowing when all of this would be over,
or when any good things would once again resume being good.
She wanted something to look forward to.
Sleepovers, campfires, and chlorine-smelling air.
“I know this is hard,” I whispered softly, as she cried.
“I promise, it is hard on me, too.
I, too, am mad, sad, lonely, and anxious.
I am missing all the same things as you.”
When I really looked I saw that all she had needed was a place to lay all her feelings down.
All her baby sister needed was a hug and warm washcloth.
All her older sister needed was a familiar view of home when she looked around.
Tessa wiped her eyes and looked at me for a minute without speaking.
She took a breath,
and I took a big one, too.
She stood and then she let me hold her.
“Thank you, Mama. I love you,”
and
“Oh, Honey. I will ALWAYS love you.”
I realize how easy it is to let our children’s feelings about this sudden halt in the world fall into the background.
They’re happy enough, right?
They can watch a shows and FOR THR LOVE eat their 16th snack.
We assume because they are smaller,
that maybe their pain also falls somewhere below.
I had thought my girls were doing fine,
for the most part.
I thought it was mostly me that had been churning inside.
But today in the face of a kid kicking rocks,
and one with a sigh,
and in another one whose face was hidden pressed into her hands I saw a reflection of some of my own hard feelings.
These three faces
just like mine.
I saw that of all the things right now in the world that feel different,
inside we will always long to hold a familiar hand.
Home is more than a place to just shelter.
It should be a soft place for all our big feelings
to land.
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.
