I was writing the last sentence of my last blog
“After all, what fun would Christmas be without a surprise”
when my phone was suddenly buzzing.
My oldest, Alena, was face-timing me.
It was 10:00.
A 10:00 face time?
This was about to be big.
She and her boyfriend, Aaron, suddenly appeared on my screen;
both of them wearing grins,
and I knew.
A moment every parent simultaneously dreams of, and dreads:
He had just asked her to marry him.
She showed me her ring with
laughter in her voice.
I almost couldn’t make out her words with how my own mind was spinning.
It’s hard to describe what I felt at that moment.
Joy that she had truly found her exact perfect one, and that he was choosing her, too.
Relief that she has never known crushing heartbreak.
Sadness to feel the closing of one of my life’s greatest chapters –
To be bowing at the end of my lead role.
I wished for the ability to push “pause” on time so much in that moment,
to just take a breath with no one watching for my reaction,
because I really don’t know how we are already here.
My little girl with the straight-across bangs…
In this season of gifts,
this new development has made me reflect so much on mine.
She, one of the most treasured ones.
I remember feeling so afraid when I read that pregnancy test strip,
sitting on the edge of the tub,
cat litter grains underneath my bare feet.
I remember not being able to think anything at first except that I would be late to work.
I didn’t know what I would do.
I was so unprepared.
All I knew was that I wanted the baby,
so I prayed for the first real time in a long time,
and I begged God for help.
My friends stood silent as I told them.
I remember where I stood saying the words.
Us, barely out of high school,
meant to be thinking more of college majors than mobiles.
But I knew what I knew,
and I held onto the thought of her from that first moment until they placed her safe and
warm on my chest.
The people doubting I could do it had just helped to form the sense of me and her being a team right from the start.
Her life has been my own life’s single greatest gift because it is what changed me and made me who I am.
It rescued me from the dark path I was walking and it set me up high on a hill,
where I was so much more able
to see.
Oh.
Now I see…
These years have been my molding,
though I was not always pliable.
I’ve made mistakes I wish I could change now,
We’ve had victories I’ll remember forever,
and I hope I will spend 50 more years going back in my mind to exactly the way that I felt there on the edge of that tub;
and how beautiful it has been to watch every fear that I had as I perched there be replaced,
instead,
with joy.
Tonight, after she got home,
that little girl I have all these thoughts about sat mere feet from me and talked about leaving.
About where she planned to live,
About how she planned to fly.
I cried as we talked tonight –
I’m sure tears she thought were disappointment, or fear,
but were actually just my tears over how fast these years had flown;
How unprepared I was to be sitting in that chair facing that grown-up version of her.
I wanted to tell her what my heart felt.
How this news was an example of how joy and pain can mix together and form a tight ball that lives in your chest,
but instead I softly whispered,
“I remember sitting with my mom like this.
I remember her saying then that one day I would KNOW,
and that’s all that I can say to you.
One day you will know how it feels to want to hold on and let go at the exact same time.”
We sat for a long time in silence, then
she stood up to hug me.
He chair scraped the hardwood floor as she stood,
and it felt, somehow, like also my heart.
I don’t know how these years have passed by so quickly.
I don’t know how we are here right now.
I don’t know how we went from a size 6x to talking about her wearing her wedding gown.
I don’t know how to do this part at all.
But, I think I know part of the reason this all seems so hard right now.
It’s because you never really imagine it.
It’s not part of the dreams you carry with you from childhood.
From early on, maybe,
you imagine being a mother with young babies,
or toddlers around your legs;
but you never really picture any of this whole messy middle.
You never dream of being the mom of a junior higher,
or high schooler.
You don’t really dream about having kids who are 12 years old and sobbing over a hole in their sweater,
or how you’ll feel when they want to move away.
The fantasies of motherhood I had started with dreams of soft, sweet babies,
chubby-faced and full of light,
then those dreams directly formed into those of a full table at Christmas when I was old.
I skipped straight to the grandkids.
(I’ve heard that is ideal)
I pictured looking around that table thinking about how proud I am that I created that life.
You never really dream of the here to there;
Of the in between.
Your feelings about it, then, may kind-of shock you.
So, since the pausing of time didn’t work,
though I tried,
and there’s nothing I can do to change that,
I guess this is the time to fill in the holes.
To dream dreams of things that I skipped over.
I’m not al all ready for this
part where you let go.
But if her life has taught me anything at all,
it’s that sometimes
the very best things happen
when you are
unprepared.
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.
