Ah, Middle School.
So we meet again.
This is now my fourth rodeo, and you would think I would be a pro at this,
but, as if right on cue, here I am being thrown off the bull again.
To any observing bystander, it would probably appear as nothing much. Just a little toss. A warning shot, of sorts.
“Get your head in the game!”
“Jump up and shake it off!”
Maybe I’m falling on old bruises, though, because I’m bracing myself, wincing a little after this morning in the car.
Paige is my fourth daughter, but the first of her kind.
When the others were already boy-crazy by this point, she is looking at the boy-crazy girls around her, and rolling her eyes.
She is, instead, focused on perfecting her sport: Soccer.
She lives and breathes it, and she even dresses the part.
But, past her tough exterior, there are deep pools of softness I hold so close to my heart.
She was given to me to save me, and I will go down fighting forever for her.
Paige carries more inside of her than burdened any of my other girls.
She wears her worries as increased solitude, head-phones on, and a closed door.
She fears being rejected, and “not enough.”
I try to soothe her with my words, but I’m just the mom.
I “have to say that,” is her response when I reach out to her.
I feel it happening.
It’s here again: That powerless feeling of Middle School motherhood.
In the middle school years, for the first time, it takes more than just a mother’s love.
Paige has been doing pretty well so far with the changes;
New schedule, new school.
I was pleased on Back to School night when the teachers already seemed to know her.
We are a couple of weeks into the year now, and nothing major has happened other than that her locker sometimes gets stuck.
(At least that’s what she has told me in the 5 minutes of conversation we have when I pick her up)
I’m making sure she’s well fed directly after pick up, because I have learned to do that if I don’t want my head eaten clean off.
Sometimes we even stop at 7-11 for those weird taquitos that roll around and around in that case that is covered in fingerprints just because I know to act quickly when I see her eyes shift, and it’s the closest stop.
I’ve learned to gently mention her taking showers, as to not offend by telling her her aroma is strong,
and to never ever mention that her hair really looks like it needs to be washed.
Instead, I suggest a shower might feel so relaxing after such a long day,
tell her I could maybe run a bath instead, light a candle, and that I bought those good epsom salts.
Middle school is the sudden balance of trying to not smother them in your previously acceptable love.
You want them to still know it’s there, waiting on the other side of closed doors and boring classrooms, but, as to not be completely embarrassing,
it will try to tiptoe more.
When she’s in trouble now, I’ve learned the way to reach her is to remind her that I know who she is down deep, underneath all the newness, and confusion, better than anyone else.
My job as her mother is to help her remember it always,
and to help her become her best self.
Middle school is like watching Atreyu attempting to walk through the Sphinx gate,
Knowing that if anyone can make it he can, but still looking at the result of failed attempts of others all around him, and worried that, if he lets doubt creep in, it could also be his fate.
This is only the sixth grade. We are just starting out.
Paige is a phenomenal student, but just like the showers I don’t mention, and the land-mine subjects I know to avoid, I have internal eggshells that lay on the ground inside of me –
I don’t talk about the friendships that I know will feel hard.
I won’t mention the time she will like someone so much, but they won’t choose her.
Then there is body image, and all the feelings around kids with different, more developed ones than hers;
The knowledge of how depression can sometimes enter and exit without her even knowing what that was…
This morning I watched as she got out of the car at drop-off and she wandered around looking for her group of friends that she never found.
She zig-zagged, searching, and then the bell rang.
She didn’t know I was still watching as she hung her head, and walked off to start a day that I’d never see from the parking lot where I had stayed.
It was a little moment in time; Five minutes total.
It was a moment she probably won’t remember later,
but I was still sitting there looking, thinking thoughts of the little girl it feels like she just was,
the face I know every twitch of,
And I saw.
An almost imperceptible signal picked up by a mother’s love.
I know from being here for the fourth time that they make it through these bumpy feeling years with a few scars, and that even those help shape them;
But at this age, no matter how much they’re changing, they’re still small in your heart,
And now you are supposed to watch them thrown into the deep end without you as their lifeguard.
For kids, these are the stretching years.
The changes they face are the biggest ones at this part.
For a mother, though, we are thrown and bruised in silence, stand back up, keep a smile on, and shoot a thumbs up, even when it feels hard.
I watched her walk off today, knowing she is off to show them who I know she is:
Talented, interesting, hilarious, unique, and worthy of a sea of friends at all moments surrounding her –
worthy of never having to search,
and I held my breath, knowing she could make it through the Sphinx Gate from my parked car;
Forever watching,
forever believing in her.
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.
