Washed clean

Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash

The sobs start in the garage, as I push the stroller back into its resting place and press my right foot down hard to click the brake on. I was hoping to at least make it into the house before I fell apart. Shit.

“Mommy, are you laughing?,” Ava asks from somewhere behind me, and I don’t reply right away, trying to collect myself or somehow play this off. “Mommy, are you laughing?”, she asks again, concern edging into her voice like she knows exactly what she’s hearing.

“No, sweetie”, I say, struggling to get the words out, “Mommy is crying.”

“I want to hug you”, she says, running over and hugging my thigh in the semi-darkness of the garage. I lean down and rub her back, say “Thanks sweetie. I love you so much.”

“It’s okay, Mommy”, she says, as I try to hold it together, collecting her various belongings from the bottom of the stroller and somehow getting us out of the garage and through the front door.

“I want to get you a stuffy”, she announces once we’re inside, and starts up the stairs before me. By the time I’m at the top, she’s coming over with her bunny. She hugs my legs again, says “It’s okay to cry, Mommy”, and the ease with which she says this undoes me. I sit down on the floor, sobbing all over again, clutching her soft grey bunny, this little gesture of care. This girl. She is such a beautiful soul.

“Can I get you a sticker?”, she asks. “Sure”, I say.

She forgets about the sticker, running to the back of the house, yelling “Do you want to sit in the sun with me?” I do. I do want to sit in the sun with her. Sitting in the sun is about all I feel capable of in this moment. But I drag myself into the kitchen and put the water on to boil, before walking through my bedroom to the big sunny patch on the floor. I curl up in the warm rectangle of sun and say “Let’s be kitties”.

“Okay, but I’m Elsa.”

“Okay Elsa kitty, come snuggle”, I say, and we snuggle in the sunshine until I hear the pot boiling. I walk to the kitchen and pour in the pasta, stir it slowly while the steam warms my hand, take a deep breath. I set the timer on the microwave for ten minutes, and we go back to being kitties in the sunny patch a little longer. The warmth of the sun and the warmth of her little body curled up against mine anchors me in this moment, heals much of what has been hurting.

I’m not ready for this to be over, but I get up when the timer goes off, stir pesto into the warm shells, throw in a handful of pine nuts and grate parmesan cheese on top.

“I want a cheese mountain, Mommy!”

I lean too heavily on pasta for her lunch, I know. Even with the chickpea pasta shells, there’s not enough protein in this meal, and I’d better at least throw some veggies on the side, I think, opening the fridge to see what we have. It could be worse, I remind myself, as that nagging sense that I’m never doing enough creeps in. I’ll make more effort to be creative with lunches, I tell myself, but she could do worse. This is some gourmet shit compared to what we were all eating in the 80’s, let’s be real.

I put the bowl on the counter, ask her to climb up on her stool. I fill a glass of water for her and bring it over, kissing her head before I walk back to the fridge.

“Why were you sad, Mommy?”, she asks, her back to me now, standing on her stool in her little navy blue dress with the white polka dots, eating at the counter in her usual spot while I rifle through the fridge trying to scrounge up something for myself.

Where to start?

Earlier that day, in the shower, I found myself feeling low, despite having just finished a workout. I went for a bike ride yesterday, I started in on myself. I just lifted weights. I am doing all the right stuff, I should be feeling good right now.

A familiar pattern of resisting my feelings, doubting their validity and asking them to justify themselves, rather than simply letting them be what they are. I decided to practice the type of acceptance I work on with my clients, something so incredibly simple, but so difficult for many of us.

I’m feeling sad today, I said to myself as the warm water rained down on my shoulders. I am feeling sad. There was no bolt of lightening or immediate relief, but I felt a quiet sense of peace in simply naming it, letting it be what it was.

Getting to school that morning to drop Ava off, there’s a supply teacher I’ve never met before. The other moms clearly know her from last year, and I watch as they give her hugs, stand back and marvel at her protruding belly. “That’s so exciting!”, I hear one mom say. “Congratulations!” says another. There’s talk of giving her son a sibling, talk of this ideal age gap “They’ll be so close!” I feel a stab of something, a dark current coursing through me as I watch all the moms of two or three celebrating this woman and her growing body, her growing family.

“Is she your only one?”, the supply teacher asks me moments later as we watch Ava charging toward the sand pit in her rain boots, blond hair streaming behind her in the dappled morning light. “Yup!” I reply, my voice unnaturally chipper.

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Three hours later, walking back to the school in the January sunshine, it hits me what’s going on. This is grief, I say to myself, and the word itself brings up such a swell of emotion that I know I have landed on the truth.

It hits me like this sometimes, now that I recognize grief for what it is, how it feels in my body. Sometimes the grief is mine, though often of unknown origin. Sometimes it belongs to someone I love, and I’m trying to carry it for them so they don’t have to. Sometimes it belongs to a stranger, someone whose eyes I accidentally make contact with in passing, and feel a sudden heaviness descend over me. Sometimes it’s a grief that belongs to the whole world and I’m just feeling my piece of it, my own personal allotment of this shared burden.

Maybe it’s about the supply teacher and her swollen belly.

Maybe it’s because this is the first week ever of Ava being in school five mornings a week, and just like that, the life I’ve known for three and a half years is gone forever.

Maybe it’s because the world is so unbelievably ugly in so many ways, and that world is coming for my daughter. This time in which I can shelter her almost completely from the the parts of the world I don’t want her to see, don’t want her to have knowledge of in her body, that time is coming to an end, day by day.

Maybe it’s because I too must turn back toward the world, no longer required to turn completely toward her, toward our home, as I have for years now.

Maybe it’s all of the bus ads and billboards peddling AI, their insider language of acronyms incomprehensible to me, this bone deep dread of knowing that the ground is shifting beneath my feet in ways I can’t even begin to imagine.

Maybe it’s because people I love are suffering and I don’t know how to make it better.

Maybe it’s the fact that I’m a 42 year old woman, and my reflection in the mirror depresses me lately.

Maybe I just miss my family.

Whatever the reason, now that I know what’s here, it’s all I can do to keep it from overflowing. I feel full to the brim with grief, tears right up to my throat.

The timing isn’t great. It never is, but I’m about two blocks away from Ava’s preschool, and the prospect of holding it together long enough to pick her up, get her home, get her fed and down for her nap before I have a moment to myself, feels daunting.

It’s off to a bad start the moment I see her. She comes running out, her new dress covered with paint, and thrusts her bag toward me. I’m hurt that she doesn’t hug me. She almost never does right at first, and I know it doesn’t mean anything, but today I notice only the other kids who reach toward their moms, wonder what I’m doing wrong.

Once I’ve got her strapped into the stroller and we’re on our way, I start into her about the paint. “Your new dress is ruined”, I tell her. “I asked you to put an apron on if you were going to paint in your new dress. Why didn’t you?” I can hear how awful I am being. I absolutely hate myself for doing this, but I can’t seem to stop. I am hurting so much that I can’t seem to stop myself from spreading it around.

We keep walking home and I soften somewhat, try to take back what I’ve done. “I’m sorry I was grumpy about your dress sweetheart”, I say, stroking her head in the stroller. “It’s not your fault. I want you to have fun at school and sometimes that means getting messy.”

“Why is it ruined?” she asks in a small voice, and I know the damage is done. My deeply sensitive child has just internalized a message of shame about not being perfect. Awesome. I take a deep breath and try to forgive myself, resolve to do better, but the lump in my throat keeps getting bigger.

We get home and when I let her out of the stroller in the driveway, she immediately takes off running down the sidewalk. “Ava come back”, I say, laughing at first at her speed, her simple joy in running. But she doesn’t come back. “Ava! Stop!” I yell, my voice sharper now, because if your kid doesn’t listen when you tell them to stop running, you have a serious problem on your hands. She keeps right on going, running past garages and driveways, closer to the cross street now than she is to me. “Ava! Stop! NOW!” I scream, in the deepest, scariest voice I can summon up, surprising even myself with the intensity of what comes out of me.

She finally stops, frozen on the sidewalk, and turns around to look at me. She’s scared, I can tell. I don’t think either of us has ever heard me sound like that. I’m practically vibrating with fear and anger as I walk over to her, wanting to grab her and scream at her and tell her that she could get hit by a car and die if she doesn’t learn to listen.

She starts whimpering as I kneel down in front of her, but I don’t hug her. I can tell she needs comfort in this moment, but I just can’t seem to give it. I just take her hands and look in her eyes and start talking about how important it is that she listen when I tell her to stop, and that she could get hurt, really hurt, if she doesn’t stop when I tell her to. I tell her it’s not okay for her to do this, it’s not safe, and that it makes me really scared when she does.

A woman is walking by us on the sidewalk as I’m kneeling in front of Ava, lecturing a child when what she really needs is a hug. I know this woman heard me scream and I can only assume she’s judging me as a bad mother. I add her imaginary vote to the tally I’ve been taking against myself all day.

I don’t comfort my child in the moment when she needs it, but I also don’t grab her hard by the arm and yank her toward our house the way the terrified and angry part of me wants to do. Maybe this one’s a wash, but each time I know I could have done better as a mother, the guilt is agonizing.

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So, half an hour later, in the kitchen, when she asks “Why were you sad Mommy?”, I tell a simpler truth than the tangled up mess of my morning.

“Sometimes change is hard for Mommy”, I say. “Sometimes I just feel sad.”

“It’s okay to be sad.”

She says it so simply. With such kindness, but also so matter of fact. This is a truth to her. It is okay to be sad.

“Did you know something, Mommy?” she asks, her back still to me as she eats her pasta.

“What’s that?”

“I’ll always be here for you.”

It pierces me to hear her say these words. To know she has internalized words I must have said to her a hundred times by now. It’s okay to cry, sweetheart. It’s okay to be sad. I’m here. I’m always going to be here for you.

I have done something right. Something big. Yes, I’m over-tired and I get grumpy, and I need to be more creative with lunches, and I just screamed like a psycho on the sidewalk. But this. This, I have done right. I’m blinking back tears again, but this time happy tears, proud ones.

“Thank you my sweetheart”, I say, rubbing her back and kissing her on the top of her head. “You are such a sweet girl.”

I make another move toward the fridge, pull it open as though I’m looking for something. I don’t want to burden her with my emotions, nor do I want to suggest there is something wrong with tears. Still, I hide behind the fridge door as I feel the sobs coming again.

“Mommy, are you laughing?” she asks.

“No sweetie. I’m crying again. But I’m crying happy tears this time. I’m crying because I’m so happy.”

She’s silent for a moment. “Laughing and crying kind of sound the same”, she says finally.

“They do, don’t they”, I say, laughing now, through my tears.

“Yea, they do. That’s silly.”

“It is silly”, I agree.

Then I wipe my eyes and ask if I can snuggle her, and we spend the rest of her lunch with her sitting on my lap on the stool. The moment is perfection. The quiet of our home, the warmth of her tiny body against mine, her unbearably cute voice and all of her little observations and questions.

And me, deeply and fully present, washed clean by all of my tears.