I will never forget the way her eyes looked when I told her we needed to talk.
My daughter Tessa, in the seventh grade, glanced up at me,
and then immediately back at the floor.
I led her outside to the chairs on the lawn and waited for her to settle a bit.
I noticed she still wasn’t looking at me,
and realized she must know that what we would be talking about was the phone call I had gotten that afternoon from one of her teachers, who had called to let me know the drastic decline in almost all of her grades.
I took a minute to look at her there,
shifting, and nervous to look up at me.
She, the one that looks most like me.
She, the middle one who feels so many kinds of growing pains.
“I got a call from the school today,” I began.
“They called to figure out how we can all help.”
Briefly her eyes darted to mine,
before they overflowed with tears.
“They say you haven’t been turning things in. That you start to do them, then stop.
I want you to know that I’m not angry.
I just want to see why you are just giving up.”
Tears dripped, and her eyelids grew puffy.
I scooted my chair closer to hers.
For an hour we sat there on the lawn as she
poured her heart out to me about feeling overwhelmed, and like she just can’t do it alone.
In that moment I heard my own voice.
I’ve felt that way too often lately to count.
What did I need in those moments?
A punishment for my failures,
Or someone willing to share in my load?
What is it I most needed to hear?
A raised voice, or “I am here for you.”
So, as her tears slowly dried and her eyes finally lifted,
together we made a plan.
That night we set out contacting teachers, researching assignments missed,
we wrote post-it notes, and made three separate lists. We broke it all down into bits.
The next day when I dropped her off at school, I watched her walk away with a smile that was on her lips but not in her eyes;
Over her shoulder a backpack so heavy it looked like it carried the actual weight of the world.
As she walked away
I saw her for the things she carries that are more heavy than books and paper.
Feelings of hurt towards her sisters,
The ache of wanting more time with me,
wanting to feel much more pretty,
wanting to be truly seen.
I sat in my van that morning in the school parking lot watching her disappear into a sea of other kids and I cried thinking,
“You’re not disappearing to me.”
I thought about how while she was carrying all of that weight,
I would forever carry the weight of her.
I cried the whole way home after that,
and I asked God how to best reach her.
What came to me was to just hold her.
Just like I had the first day.
I tell her often about the fact that even though she was daughter number three,
I cried the most at her birth.
That somehow it was like my heart knew from the first moment they placed her warm on my chest, even before my mind did,
that there was something extra special about her, and I had sobbed while I was holding her.
Many nights I have stood by her bedside as she’s cried herself to sleep over Jr. High stresses and thoughts, and as I have smoothed her hair I have told her stories about all the ways I remember feeling just like her.
With hair different than you’d like,
with other girls girls being noticed first,
longing for someone who always chooses you.
So this week I let her know I will choose her at every chance.
This week we set to work tackling all that missed work from the time she got home from school until the sky was dark.
I’ve cuddled her more, and told her that together we would get it all done.
The school work,
and all the life work that will come up after.
On Monday morning Tessa went to school with a stack of late work to turn in.
She was tired,
but she wasn’t tired alone.
By Monday night I looked online to see what things would maybe still show up as undone
and I almost fell over into the floor.
In ONE WEEK of encouragement, focus, and really hard work,
That girl I have believed in from moment one had raised 4 failing grades all to solid Bs.
I ran to tell her, and the look in her eyes rose up right before me out of defeat like a phoenix.
“I am SO proud of you, Honey!
Look at what you did!”
Her grin was a half-mile wide, and she softly said,
“Thank you, Mama, for helping me.”
What do we want our children to learn
at the end of it all,
when our job is done?
Will it be square roots and fraction reduction?
Will it be how to write a proper outline?
Will it be how to fit into some box we have built for them?
Or is it that no matter what they present to us – be it messy hair, picked last, struggling, and different than the child we expected them to be –
that we are always in their corner,
no matter what they show up like.
This week I watched the result of proving to my child that I was here for her,
not a perfect score,
and I watched as that one thing transformed it all.
I hope that Tessa never forgets the nights we worked when it was dark, and that she was never alone,
because I know that one day she will be grown and things will feel dark again,
but maybe she will remember that
love is here to help light the way out.
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.
