It was only her second counseling session.
I waited outside in the car, staring at the way the raindrops dotted the windows the same way I used to notice them as a kid;
Watching the way multiple small droplets blend, and then one heavy drop forms out of them.
At first they’re so small you almost don’t notice, then, before you know it, the glass is covered, and your whole view changes.
My fourteen year old, Chloe, had begun some very much needed counseling –
Counseling she resisted, and was upset that I had scheduled her for.
She had sighed and begged, I explained, she huffed as she got out of the car.
I just sat there doing what we moms do: weighing out every single move that I’ve made.
It was only a half hour of waiting that day.
(They don’t tell you how often you’ll be waiting for your children, really)
Waiting for two pink lines,
Waiting to hear their heartbeat,
Waiting for them to descend, make their entrance, take their first steps, say their first word, and for the actual love, to please just go to sleep.
We wait in pick-up lines, at the sidelines, backstage, and up at nights with the porch light on.
We wait for test results, just a semblance of a thank you, and hoping, in the end,
we’re still needed by them.
I had waited by her bedside for months every night years ago as her anxieties regularly overtook her; There, soothing her furrowed brow and reminding her she wasn’t alone.
I’d kneel there so long my legs shook when I tried to stand up.
Now, I was waiting for her to see herself as I had all along.
Strong enough, brave enough, capable of holding on.
Had I shown her by example?
Is there more I could have done?
And the drops turn into rivers that flow into the canals
I remember when she was little and she would be making something, sitting in the midst of a pile of yarn, and scotch tape, and bright paper scraps.
I remember the way her baby teeth kind of rested on her lip, and her nose scrunched when she smiled and told me not to look yet;
The finished product was coming.
Her “big reveal.”
“Just wait,” she would beg me, and I knew well that what I had seen first as just a mess,
would end up as true art that I’d hang with alphabet magnets, front and center, so you could see it well.
Some beauty that had been hidden in a scrap pile seen only by her.
I hoped as I sat in my car that day (just sure she was telling her counselor all the ways I have failed) that this situation would also end up that way;
That one day I would stand back and look at the beautiful thing that she had made out of what kind of just looks like scraps right now.
I hoped that she would see I was there holding the tape.
Lately it doesn’t feel like she sees anything I’m doing though.
Not the waiting in my car, not the caring, not the weeks spent seeking help, not the heart behind making her go and sit in an office with a white-noise machine and a woman she barely knows…
I had cried in my own therapy session last week describing this phase of motherhood, and the loneliness of it all.
I talked about how it felt to watch my own mother age at the exact same time I’m watching my teenagers grow.
“You’re grieving big losses,” she had commented,
and the tears began to freely fall because then, in my mind, I pictured myself standing on top of a narrow peninsula, and suddenly having both sides of it fall.
The two bookends of my life:
My beginning, and all that comes after me.
Sometimes it feels like it’s crumbling, and there’s nowhere to go.
I pictured, then, trying to stand on my own, now on only a sliver of the ground that once was, with the only choices being to go forward, or retreat;
Not even knowing what I’ll be facing.
Suddenly a powerful memory came to me.
When I was in high school, my closest friend group used to go hiking often in the redwood forests along the ocean’s edge.
On one particular day, I was about 6th in a single-file line, really only looking at my own feet and the person’s back in front of me (as is a teenager’s way)
when, before I realized where I was about to be walking, I looked up to see that we were headed out onto a steep, narrow walkway very high above the sea.
Each side was a hundred foot drop at least.
As my friends marched on, I froze, terrified, halting everyone behind me.
I have always been incredibly frightened of heights.
Those in front of me beckoned, and those behind me kind of huffed, impatiently,
but I could not will my legs forward.
They were jello underneath me. I felt like I couldn’t breathe, and I did the only thing I could do in that moment:
I sat down.
Suddenly, I was straddling both sides of that walkway as if it were a horse, and I scooted, scraping myself backwards to safety, mud plastering my seat.
My friends went on with their hike that day, as I waited for their return in my car;
The back of my pants permanently marked with the evidence of my own fear, and future regret.
I have spent nearly 30 years now thinking of that day often:
A stand-out time of not fighting the fear that is in me.
I spent hours staring at a dumb Volvo dashboard while they, no doubt, saw stunning views of the forest and sunset and water beneath;
And now, here I was waiting again, each small seeming droplet joining,
now weighing heavier, heavier, and moving me.
My waiting is no longer because I’m frozen anymore.
This kind of waiting is me moving forward – helping THEM move forward.
This waiting is me I sing every personal fear, experience, and trauma to help lead my own girls on to better views safely, regardless of how they may resist at first.
After all – I’m not hiking these cliffs alone.
They are walking right behind me, watching where my feet fall so that they will know where to step.
My mother, up ahead, has spotted the ocean, and she’s gone on.
This time, this season, it is up to me to lead;
To not to sink to the earth and scrape along with mud on my seat.
This time I must walk bravely forward.
The Waiting Season is nearly done.
That hike that day as a teenager was a droplet that would end up joining with another one of visions of the mom I want to be, and now they’re both blended into a more full, rounded one.
Those droplets will flow down into streams of future things, those streams into rivers, those rivers into seas.
Tiny, and insignificant seeming in the beginning – Bright paper scraps, in the end, transformed beautifully.
I waited for this girl from before her life had even begun,
and I will stand up again and again,
though my legs may shake,
knowing that you only see the ocean
if you keep moving on.
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.
