The following is 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.
I had been expecting her.
My friend, Eliza showed up at my door at 10am.
I answered her knock without makeup,
and shoved the dogs back, as I do, in a sports bra and covered in paint dust from the table I’d been sanding outside.
My daughter, Alena, had found a dilapidated five piece set online and purchased it to refurbish for her new place.
My daughter, Alena, who gets married in 26 days.
My daughter whose fiancé moves into their new apartment tomorrow.
The place where she’ll take all her things.
Eliza had come bearing gifts for the younger girls following a big garage clean-out.
Jump ropes and sand buckets,
a couple of balls,
a plastic sword, and an old pogo stick.
I told her to come in, and asked her to please ignore all the mess, meaning my living room and also myself.
The wedding is overtaking my small house.
Everywhere you look there is an Amazon box, or some fake greenery sprig.
Getting through the dining room is like navigating the dark innards of Hezekiah’s Tunnel.
For a minute we just chatted there in my entry-way about weather, and she casually mentioned some dog training tips as my dog Gimli jumped all over her;
But, when a silent moment came, she looked up at me from a slightly bowed, knowing head,
and she quietly asked,
“So how are you REALLY doing?”
My eyes welled with tears.
(Their current favorite pass-time)
These are big days when they fly from our nests…
Eliza knows this all so well.
That bag of toys she had in her hands was being passed on from her only daughter,
after all,
just recently gone off to school.
I remember watching Eliza go through the pain of these changes last year.
I remember her telling me about the packing up with excited sounding words,
but with pleading looking eyes that begged me silently to please, just somehow, make it stop.
I remember the first time I saw her out around town on her own afterwards,
and how it just seemed she was missing a piece of her.
She moved to me as my voice shook and she put her arms around me then, her own eyes looking kind of misty too.
Nothing more really needed to be said,
because we both knew –
There’s nothing that can take this feeling away.
No going around;
Only through.
She knew my heart,
and I now fully understood hers,
so we just stood there knowing all the things together beside a bag of memory-filled hand-me-down toys.
Alena entered the house at that moment, looking surprised to see me suddenly crying when I had just been sanding chairs with her moments before.
I’ve told her not to even try to understand it.
The understanding will come when her own children go, and only ever then.
“See what you’re doing!” Eliza jokingly burst.
“You’re breaking your mother!”
We all laughed,
and I dried my eyes with two dusty thumbs.
I took a wobbly breath as Eliza gave instructions on caution when kids are using the pogo stick.
She told of the tricks her daughter had once done on it with a sparkle in her eyes.
The kind of sparkle only motherhood memories make.
I promised to honor its daredevil past by handing it down to Paige,
my seven year old who comes equipped with a factory standard mouth guard.
We planned to get coffee soon as she left,
and I went back outside to sand away more.
More of the table.
More of myself.
Life’s rough feeling edge is good at making us end up more smooth.
I haven’t known how to do this part, really.
I was prepared for so many other parts…
Babysitting from the age of 11 had made me proficient in babies, and diapers, and speaking Toddlerese;
But I never really thought about THIS.
I didn’t think about the way it would feel to see a stack of her varying sized aprons folded there on the stove, waiting to be put in a box.
We baked cookies at Christmas in that one…
That one was a birthday gift…
I wasn’t prepared for the fact that we shared all the best mugs in the cabinet, and would have to divide them up custody battle style.
(I’ll get the Magnolia one on weekends)
What will it be like to not see her toothbrush on the sink,
or to not smell her shampoo still hanging in the steam of the bathroom after her shower?
*swish*
In my mind I hear the sound of her wide-spinning skirt, and her giggly-sounding,
“Mama! Mama, watch!”
But that skirt has turned to a wedding gown,
and if I have learned anything,
it’s that you have to change with them in every stage if you want to still stand beside them.
Who you are as a mother will have more growing pains than any of their little legs ever do.
What you are for a toddler will suddenly be the exact wrong thing for your pre-teen.
What you were for your teenager will one day have to sustain you with memories as you watch them find their wings from much further away.
Sitting here surrounded by boxes for her wedding, mixed with boxes of her childhood things,
I’m reminded of the day that I first moved away.
We lived in the house next door to this one.
I drove off down this very same street.
My mom had other plans that day. She supposedly couldn’t make it home.
My dad came home from his real estate job, still dressed in his suit, and sat in my floor, tie thrown over his shoulder, taking apart my bed frame.
He quietly loaded it into the truck already stacked with all my other things.
Almost the only thing he said to me that day was,
“Your mother couldn’t really bear to be here. Make sure you call her sometimes. She will need to still hear from you.”
For years I felt kind of hurt that she couldn’t make time to be there for that big moment,
or that he couldn’t have thought to add that maybe he’d miss me, too;
But sitting with this view tonight I think that I get it now.
It’s not that she didn’t want to be there for me, it’s that she couldn’t stand to see me drive away.
It’s not that he didn’t care.
It’s that he used her as an excuse to tell me to call.
He was a tough rancher kind, after all.
I never really contemplated how they felt that first night without me.
Some things you just cannot know till you know.
*swish*
After we finished sanding, and I helped Alena refinish the table, showing her my distressing techniques,
I went in to put my daycare girl, Linnae, down for her nap.
I sat next to her on the bed after reading a story.
I watched her as she fell asleep.
I looked at her sleeping face and heard Alena’s Greek dad’s voice whispering over HER tiny sleeping face,
“Micri Angeli….” (Tiny angel) and
I felt the tug that I’ll feel, I’m sure until I die,
of longing for a still little one.
I reached for my phone then, and saw there was a message from a friend that I rarely speak to anymore.
The message, much to my surprise,
stated off saying she just wanted to thank me.
She said that years ago,
as her own daughter was about to enter the pre-teen phase, and she was facing the teenage one ahead,
she had expressed her nervousness for it.
She said it had been met with many “Watch out!”s and “Ooh. Be very afraid”s,
but she said that she clearly remembered a conversation with me then telling her that
teenagers really get a bad wrap,
and that I just knew she was going to love it.
She said in a sea of voices telling her all that she should dread,
my voice was the only one that had made her realize that maybe this was about to be something to look forward to,
and that had made all the difference.
She told me she WAS loving it.
She told me that I had been right.
As I read that, I felt it like a balm for my heart.
Instead of feeling like those were just words I had said to a friend,
I felt like those were words I had spoken to my future self.
Maybe Adult, On-Her-Own Alena is getting a bad rap.
Maybe I will even love it the most.
*swish*
Tonight, surrounded by the unavoidable images of my oldest daughter leaving home,
I am reminded that I still have two pre-teens waiting to show me just how great the teenage versions of them can be.
I still have a seven year old with hardly any teeth who is about to cover those gaping holes with a mouth guard and try her hand at tricks on a handed-down pogo stick.
I will always have yesterday.
I had a beautiful, meaningful today with truths woven through it like a tapestry,
and I have a tomorrow
that I might just love more than I think.
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.
