My 18 year old, Chloe, is back from a week at camp.
After what happened to all those daughters in Texas, I feel gratitude, and also the lingering weight.
Every day, with each new headline, I cling tighter to my children.
I picture their faces, and the grief of other mothers. I try not to imagine how it must feel…
I sometimes fantasize about pulling them into an underground nest, and burrowing it deep.
She has already cried at least twice about camp being over.
She came back different; Softer, and with more friends.
Her fingernails were a little dirty.
She showed me pictures of the kids playing lawn games, and her posing with her bunk mates.
She mentioned wanting to volunteer as a counselor for the younger girls that would soon be coming to take her place.
Chloe grew up much too fast, and went through things no young girl should.
She has spent the last several years tossed back and forth.
Sometimes it was even her own hands doing the tossing.
She has quietly longed for what was real, while wrestling with how to get it.
Many nights it has been thoughts of her that have barred me from sleep.
But, she has been growing, reaching out, and trying new things.
She even broke up with the loser boyfriend with his pants slouching to his knees.
She got invited to summer camp with a small church full of people who have embraced her,
and she came home, back down from those mountains looking rested, and different.
Even her voice seems to have come home changed.
She sat on the couch with her knees drawn up the night she came home,
recounting the events, and the laughter.
She told me about everything, including the spongy eggs that they had every morning to eat.
When I asked her what it was that stood out most, though, she didn’t even hesitate to say it was that, every night when things grew quiet,
the kids would go to the top of the hill and lay in the grass in the dark,
with the world still all around them,
and together they would start to sing.
They would look up at the spray of stars,
and lift their voices up: An ancient act.
I know it is not novel – the mix of campfire and voices,
but, when I thought about it, I realized she had never really experienced that exact kind of thing.
Teens these days have been raised adrift in a sea of Instagram and text messages.
They are faced with pressure and issues we never even began to face.
I sometimes forget that they may be advanced, but they still crave what feels soft, and easy.
I sometimes forget how mind-blowing what is simple and pure can be.
She talked about the way you can’t see stars like that in the city.
She talked about pulling away from distraction, and how nice it was.
I realized that my daughter, who spends so much time on her phone, had experienced a top thing I have learned to cherish in my lifetime:
Being awestruck by nature, and using it to learn unshakable truths.
It is in those exact kinds of moments that I’ve felt pulled along the most powerfully.
She talked about the feeling of being on top of that hill, so close to a multitude of stars,
laid over her like a blanket,
and how leaving the noise and lights of what was down below had made her able to see the sky so much more clearly.
I could tell she understood that it was something more than physical that she had experienced.
It was spiritual, is what she was saying.
Zoom out. Quiet down. Rest, and see.
I believe it is natural in us to be drawn to a place like that,
where we feel that same type of sandwiched:
Where our body, still touching the earth, feels simultaneously pressed against the miracle of the universe: Still here. Still active in our communities, but with a clear vision of all we could be.
Still in the dirt. Still in the present.
Not floating off, uselessly into space.
Not face-down so we cannot see the mystery of all that is out there.
Face-up, in the cool dark grass, hands grasping the blades,
A traveler in both worlds,
heart full of awe and gratitude for what is all around us.
Pulled, but still tethered.
THAT is the place.
We are not put on this earth to fight, and scream at one another, hurt one another, lord over others, make up rules, draw lines, and make others pay.
It can be so much more simple than we make it when we’re down below.
Come up here and lay back.
Listen to other people’s chorus.
It is powerful.
This earth and the ones singing beside us are an unimaginable gift.
All we have to do is lay back, and look up to see.
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.
