This week my youngest daughter, Paige, is out early every day due to parent teacher conferences at school.
The anxiety she has felt over potentially being forgotten has been more than clear to see.
I’m assuming she envisions going directly from being left on a school bench to suddenly raising herself all alone in the deep recesses of the woods, clothed in an animal pelt, using an old corn cob to brush her teeth.
This anxiety made it so that today our ride to school sounded something like this:
“Are you SURE you’ll remember that I get out at 1:00?
Like, ONE?
As in the first number there is.
As in EARLIER THAN USUAL. Two hours earlier than usual.
That is when I will be getting out, and will need a ride home.
From you.
Who will need to be here BY ONE.
Repeat it back to me. ‘One o’clock.’
*getting out of the car*
OK. I love you, and I will be so happy to see you when you show up today to get me at one o’clock, because that will be TWO HOURS EARLIER than I normally get to see you.
Because it will be one o’clock.”
When I posted about this on facebook, a friend asked me how I handle such things as a mother. She asked if I assume she’ll just outgrow these types of worries some day,
or if instead, on purpose, maybe I’d be a little later into the bus circle to show her that my lateness was something that she could conquer.
I told her that since Paige is daughter number four, since this is not my first rodeo by any stretch of the imagination,
I have learned that many of these types of concerns are simply a part of their development.
One day they are blissfully unaware of all of the concerns life can hold, then suddenly, one day their eyes are opened to things like death, and illness, and the bodily harm that could be done to them.
Some people are just more on high-alert, naturally.
*Big, blinking arrow above me*
Because I deal with anxiety, myself, I try to use what I know I need in times of stress, personally, and I then try to offer that same thing to my daughters.
I heard the questions from the back seat this morning, and knew that what Paige needed to hear is that she is unforgettable.
There is no way my life could just go on happily without her.
She needs to know she is thought of even when she’s not standing there, with her big eyes and ample requests, right in front of me.
The core of the issue is that she is a ten year old little girl who wants me to look up from my phone, and my busy life, to tell her regularly how much she matters.
I smile and shake my head sometimes at her need to be reassured so often,
but in my mind she is still my chubby-cheeked baby, holding her hands up from somewhere near my knees, begging, for just a moment, to be lifted, and swayed.
I can still hear her voice, still barely more than a baby, asking her sweet,
“Mommy hold you?”
Isn’t that what any of us want, in reality;
For someone to just pick us up and hold us securely against them?
Someone to say, “I’ve got you,” hands guarding our sides,
words that mean, “Oh, Honey. I could never forget YOU.”
Yesterday my own mom drove the nearly 4 hours it takes to get here because I had called and asked her to come stay for a while.
I’ve been struggling emotionally a lot in the last several weeks.
Middle age is not for the faint of heart; Neither is parenting teenagers,
and sometimes the darkness tries to get at you.
When you have had a good mother that you are close to,
that “I want my mommy” thing never really leaves you.
She showed up with her physical therapy pedaling machine that weighs roughly 600 pounds trailing behind her.
We laughed that she’d shrunk even more since the last time she had come.
I could almost pick HER up now.
She is small and white-headed, slower to step into the house,
but I know the ability to help carry me has more to do with the who than the how.
Within 4 hours of her being here, she had washed dishes, helped with homework, taken out the trash, and rubbed my back with lotion.
The example set before me has always been that you mother best by just showing up.
It is not in the expensive gifts or in the piano lessons.
I realized this morning that promising I will be there in a multitude of ways is really the entire motto of motherhood to me.
Sometimes it might be in yoga pants with holes in the thighs,
sometimes my entire being will embarrass them,
but they won’t remember those parts late one night when they are in their mid-40’s, and their footing feels shaky. My drop-off circle bed head won’t be what sticks with them.
I pray that in times of distress for all of their lives, they’ll crave my same songs I’ve sung to them.
I hope they’ll send out an S.O.S call then to me, as well, and that the circle of love will long be passed down through them,
because of course I never left them in the wilderness with just a corn cob.
No matter what, I will make my way to them.
May they know I will never neglect to pick them up.
Through break-ups, and friend drama, through moving paint splatters and spackle,
I will show up over and over because that’s what moms do for ones they’d do anything for.
“Mama, will you pick me up?”
“Of course, Honey.
You are all that matters.”
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.
