White lights draped over-head like a canopy as my friend Lisa and I sat out in the dark.
She had sent me an urgent S.O.S. asking if she could please come over.
Life has been hitting her hard.
We tilted our heads up the the stars as we talked.
I don’t have all the answers for every hurting friend right now,
but one thing I know is that some cool night air and conversation help lift a whole lot of burdens,
and those are some things I can spare.
Crickets chirped a concert, and the fire pit glowed.
Our faces lit up amber, and we talked through everything as best we could then.
I remembered something as I listened to her difficult stories;
Like, suddenly, I knew a cure.
I said, “Hold on,” and I disappeared without explaining anything at all,
and I returned with my outdoor speaker.
“I’ve got something that will help,” I said, and I pressed play on the music of a country station.
We sat in the dark and sang to songs for hours.
She left hours later looking happier and lighter.
My friend Courtney had told me of the Pandora “90’s Country” station a few months ago,
and listening to it had been like welcoming back a part of myself I haven’t seen or heard from in years.
A part with fewer cares, and longer, windblown hair.
Bringing those songs back into rotation brought a missing part of me right back with them.
Since that night I have ordered myself three 90’s country CDs
(Yes, I still use CDs, so, please, just let me live)
that I already know every single word to.
Clearly, this music is medicinal, and Justin can scoff all he wants that it’s sappy.
This is a matter of survival.
If this year has shown me anything at all it is that now is the time to find the you you’ve forgotten.
You can be a friend you don’t have to distance from.
Turn that music on and let yourself remember.
Those country songs bring back the Kerri singing out car windows on a long open road.
They bring back learning to drive a stick-shift on loose gravel.
They transport me the same way Reggae places me in an innertube in a sun-lit patch along the river.
Black Gospel music feels like family, sock frills, and warm hugs.
When I’m Mama Bear it’s time for a good rap battle.
This week I read a friend’s Facebook post.
She is a single mom of three young kids trying to help with distance learning and also get her work done.
Trying to hold the entire sinking world of four people up with only ten small, shaky fingers.
She was in need of some support, so I did the only real thing I could, and I loved her with my own experience.
My advice to her was advice I have needed lately myself:
Sometimes we have to let the burdens go for a day.
It will all be there tomorrow.
Build blanket forts, and go for ice cream.
Take a break from helping them know things that come from a textbook, and teach them instead to remember that the most important lessons are what they are learning from the teachers Constance, and Love.
When to stop.
How to play.
How to listen.
They’re learning – like her – to love and be true to themselves.
They’re learning to rise above. Such a huge lesson.
She thanked me and I kept thinking about that,
since this week we, too, have had our own struggles.
It’s like distance learning came to eat our heads this week and we just layed on a plate and asked if it would like some mustard.
This week I have felt pressure to succeed, and I’ve felt a sense of some failure.
I’ve cried wanting less, and I’ve cried wanting more.
I’ve struggled to even make sense here.
But, on Saturday we took a trip to the next town over for an errand.
My youngest daughter, Paige, was the only one who had come along.
My husband and I got out of the car, and she had immediately burst into tears that she didn’t want to be there.
She “just wanted to go home.”
She begged, and she clung to the side of the car door.
I was surprised by her sudden resistance.
But, rather than lecture, I decided to dig deeper,
and I asked her to explain what she was really feeling.
This is when my littlest one
(They often teach the best lessons)
said words that resonated deep in my soul.
In slowing down to listen to what her cries actually said about her feelings,
I had made more sense of my own.
“I just don’t like going somewhere where I can’t see how to get home”
was what she gave as her reason;
And I tucked that away
like a creased slip of paper
for when I was ready to unfold it.
Today, in my heart, I am pondering that yearning.
I think it might be the new feeling this season.
We all want to look around and still see a world we recognize.
You can sense it in the voices of every person you talk to.
It’s in the cry of every child.
In the eyes passing in the grocery aisles.
In the collective sighs as the headlines worsen.
To look around and feel comfortable and safe.
The wish for every gender,
race,
and person.
So maybe today we can honor that shared heart’s desire when our kid doesn’t want to distance learn anymore.
When the three year old is screaming they don’t want to wear a mask,
or our friend says they just can’t stand what they’re feeling.
We don’t have all the answers,
but maybe one we do have is to help remind each other of beautiful wide-open spaces,
and to give it through grace,
or just through the right music.
Remind each other we are not just a sea of screen faces.
Maybe today we can see that cry lives in us all,
whether under night stars,
or in our beds dreaming.
We are all just doing the best that we can.
None of us wants to feel alone.
We just want the us that we recognize.
We all just want to go home.
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.
