I taught my seven year old to use the microwave today, and sat back feeling accomplished.
See?
I was doing OK.
I was fine with increasing displays of just how big they’re all getting!
I was mature enough to handle gifting them these tools of independence!
Look at me go! Look at them go!
Look at her eating her self-warmed food!
Fly little bird! Fly!
All was right in the world, and I leaned back on the couch with my hands behind my head, when in that very same self-congratulatory moment,
my 12 year old, Chloe, came walking out of her room straight to me to say a thing so cold, so calloused, it left me in disbelief.
Her announcement that she had decided
she was done with all her Barbies,
and could she just give them all to Paige?
“Done with your Barbies?! You’re not DONE with your Barbies! You played with them this last week! You love those Barbies, they’re your favorite thing! You shouldn’t give them away!”
I felt like I was grasping at those Barbies.
Clinging to every pokey thumb that refused to go through a long sleeve.
She looked a little confused about my strong reaction.
She sat down beside me, staring.
She patted my arm and said, “Mama, it’s OK.”
For 5 straight minutes I fought for those Barbies, and I am here to say
I blame every Toy Story movie,
because while she was busy looking at me like I had finally fully lost it,
internally I was singing Jessie’s song,
“When Somebody Loves You.”
I didn’t expect her to understand my thoughts;
The way it felt to walk into her room sometimes and see her brushing their hair on her bed.
The way I could then exit and smile,
mentally stamping her file with a big, bold “Still A Little Girl.”
How is it possible that in the time it took to heat up Mac and cheese with one,
another one was passing right through The Gate?
Hadn’t it been enough that this week, Paige had said I could just drop her off at karate.
All nonchalant.
She’s never wanted to go there alone before.
“I’m fine. Really,” she said as she tightened her belt.
“You can go do what you need to do, and just come get me when you’re done.”
She yanks her belt twice when she’s confident.
I waited and then counted “One. Two.”
I watched her walking into the dojo that day with her small smile and last-minute wave,
and almost changed my mind about driving away as the urge to jump from the car and chase down her littleness washed over me.
Yes, it is freeing having them grow and change,
but it always takes you a little by surprise.
There’s never any warning when something will be the last time.
Last time you fed her a bite,
last time you washed her hair,
last time that she asked you to stay…
But something I want my girls to learn so much,
is how to be confident when they are alone.
To know how to stand firm, and to be brave and strong.
That’s something I struggle with even now.
I treasure seeing them make these new “big girl” moves.
So I waved back to the little girl in the white uniform –
Off to go conquer the world.
My oldest daughter, Alena, texted me this week asking what the family’s plans were for Thanksgiving.
She said she and her new husband, Aaron, were trying to work out what their holiday plans would be,
as far as sharing time, and splitting families was concerned.
And as much as I think about details,
and project so much into the future,
I can honestly say,
I never had thought about this part before.
I had never considered that one day she would stop being by my Christmas tree on Christmas morning with her hair undone.
I didn’t realize that last year would be the last time we had our traditional argument over whether to get a full tree or a sparse one.
The last year we take a picture with the whole family standing by the tree with spaces for the ornaments that we all like,
while she stands off in the woods by her own mammoth favorite, far too big for any home.
This will be the year she gets that blasted bushy tree.
Aaron has better be prepared to sleep nestled in branches for all of December.
Her big trees, they are coming to stay.
I mentally catalogued how few holidays we really have with our kids after that message.
Her Thanksgivings and Christmases played like a slideshow in my mind.
I read one post several months ago that said,
“Eighteen summers. That’s all you really have. Cherish every one.”
I’ve never forgotten that thought.
I had never thought about that this grown-up phase means that sometimes she won’t be there to make her Thanksgiving desserts,
or her hopeful Pinterest crusts that sometimes work and sometimes fail.
There’s just no warning,
and then some things are done.
The tree battles,
the hand in yours,
the Barbies on the bed…
I responded to her text by telling her to remember that this was their time as a couple to decide what it was THEY wanted to do and feel on their holidays.
They were a family now.
They could only choose it for themselves.
I told her this both meaning it wholeheartedly from experience,
and also while choking back a host of my own feelings;
My main setting these days.
My own voice wanted to beg her to please just always know that this is home;
Even when a new place becomes one, too.
This is the way,
I think,
this whole next phase of motherhood will go.
Releasing them all with one hand,
holding myself back with the other.
Pushing them from a nest that I have
filled with my own down.
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.
