Yesterday was my birthday.
I turned 49, and I’m now at the age where I am questioning if I have to actually tell people that.
I cannot wrap my mind around almost being in my 50s,
although I remember turning 30 and feeling the same way about it.
I went into the day feeling a little emotional.
The sky was on its 30th day of being overcast.
I’ve just been through a big health scare that has left me stressed and sensitive.
I cry now at the drop of a hat.
Somehow, the thought of getting older and weaker, fading, and greying, and going to more doctors’ appointments wasn’t what I wanted to focus on.
At the start of the day, I would just as soon have chosen to spend the entire day reading and drinking coffee in bed, but my girls had made plans to take me out antiquing, and for coffee, because they know I love it, with my oldest planning to cook dinner and dessert afterwards.
The whole family would be there.
It ended up being a wonderful day full of things I adore;
Even grumpy old me had to admit.
I could roam the antique store for hours, contemplating the life each little trinket has lived, looking at other people’s photos and jewelry, and book inscriptions.
I guess I feel kindred with all of them at this phase in life:
Sometimes dusty, sometimes forgotten on a shelf.
I’m at the age now of my girls being gone so often.
They breeze in, grab some cheese and some cash, and are gone again with hardly a greeting at times.
I find myself missing the days when they were small and causing chaos and hilarity.
I even sometimes miss my toy-cluttered house.
They made me want to pull my hair out some days, but it was the exact life I had always wanted to live. I so often feel resistant to walking forward anymore.
I want to go backwards sometimes, or at the very least just stay for a breather right where I’m at.
At this age, I feel a bit set on a raft that’s gently floating away little-by-little;
Separate, still watching all that is going on, but knowing that, with each day, I’ll be further away from it.
So, I was pensive and quietly thinking,
reminding myself to breathe.
It was just a day. Calm down, Kerri! Just another year.
I was pleasantly surprised when the day ended up being so lovely, with friends and family messaging to check in, and, at the end, came the part I love most:
Called only “The Tradition.”
The Tradition is real big in this house.
Our family has a thing of going around the table on birthdays as we share the dessert, and allowing each person to take a turn to tell just what they love or admire most about the person whose birthday it is.
One by one this year, my girls poured their hearts out to me. Deeply, and thoughtfully.
I almost could not take their words in.
My oldest told about how, now that she is a mother, too, she realizes what a true sacrifice it all is.
The daughter who I worried most about, who struggled the most in her teenage years, told me how much she has realized now that I have
always been her best friend.
The daughter most like me, whom I’ve butted heads with so often, told me she hopes one day she can love people the way that she has seen that I have.
My youngest, whom I’ve worn myself out for this year, driving to soccer games and practices, told me “Thank you for always supporting my passions.”
It was like every missing piece of me had been found.
In a shocking twist, even my two-year-old granddaughter, Mavis, said, “Thank you for all you do,” as I handed her cup to her at dinner.
I looked around the table at the end of the night, and it felt so symbolic:
The reward, staring back at me, after all the work I’ve put in.
They have listened, and absorbed, and quietly appreciated.
I have been seen even in my faded feeling season, I found.
All the work, stress, and fear I’ve felt in the years spent raising them had ended up putting me at that candlelit table last night, surrounded by their words, and their food, and their love in all forms.
At this age, I ponder the life I’ve lived on my birthdays.
I think about what I’ve done right, and maybe what I’d like to try doing differently now ,
But those words coming from those girls: My Life’s Work?
The best gift. All I could have asked for.
Being their mother is what I dreamed my life could be about.
I have wrung myself out for these four,
cried, fearing that I wouldn’t survive it, called my mom so many times in a panic, asking her to come fast.
I’ve sat in hard meetings, and bled out money.
I’ve been unable to sleep many nights, worrying for them.
Yes, they are the reason I’m greying.
They are the main reason I shake my head.
They also make me laugh harder than any four people.
They have been 100% worth all of it.
Last week I read a post asking people,
“What memory of you do you think always makes God smile,” and I immediately pictured myself at 8 years old, sitting at the top of this same street, on a blanket in the grass.
I was surrounded by multiple Cabbage Patch Kids.
I was pretending to mother them, and was taking their pictures.
I guess I never stopped doing that.
It always felt like my calling. I just wanted to be a mom, and to love my kids.
(I’d like to point out to my daughter, Tessa, that – SEE – I even made my dolls have their picture taken, so just sit there and smile without complaining for a second)
Looking back, I feel like, in that moment, I was shown my destiny.
I just didn’t know it yet.
All I ever wanted for my life could be seen in that snapshot memory:
A blanket, some children, the breeze, and some imagination.
Their faces looked back at me last night as I thought about all this, and, for a brief moment, time stood still.
Even though it was my birthday, it wasn’t only my life that flashed in my memory.
I saw their births, and bath times, and many one-more-bite dinners.
I saw dropping them off at sleepovers, and their first dances.
The way we learned how to live together in this much smaller house.
They are the evidence of how I’ve spent the first 49 years of my life,
and I am so proud of them.
How could I be anything but grateful?
They’re right there: Everything I dreamed of.
I picture God knowing I’d be sitting at that table, asking them to smile one day, from that moment when I was just a little girl, posing her dolls for a picture in the grass.
Some might wonder why my favorite photo from my birthday didn’t even have me in it.
It’s because these four ARE me.
They are everything.
My daughters show who I am.
I hope that the next half of my life allows me to watch in amazement, as they become even more of everything than I ever did.
More loving, more giving, more thoughtful, more compassionate, more true to themselves, more bent towards justice and mercy,
more willing to stand up for what they believe in.
I know that was my wish as I blew out the candle, right before I realized:
I was never fading.
I was being divided up four ways among them.
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.
