You Are Loved

I know two little girls who are burying their mother today.

Well, I don’t really know them and I didn’t really know their mother, either. She was in the same group of friends as me when we lived in the Upstate. We enjoyed one another’s company and chatted in that friendly, “how ya been?” kind of way.

She’d had cancer for some time. She’d been in and out of treatment and tests always waiting for it to reoccur. Then it did and this time there was no treatment.

Our friends have rallied around that family for a long time. They’ve cooked meals and cared for the girls and given spa days and date nights and dinner parties to show that family just how loved they are. Charlie and I have been absent for five years but I keep up with that crowd through Facebook. It’s been over a year since I last saw Joyce.

This morning I’m wondering about her girls. I know people will say, “thank God she isn’t sick anymore,” and I wonder if those girls will agree. I know people will say, “she loved you both,” and I wonder if they’ll believe it.

I wonder what I’d want people to say to Hollie at my funeral. Especially if I left her now, before she’s become a woman, before high school has tested her and some boy has broken her heart. I wonder what people should tell her when they know she won’t have her mom to help her get dressed for her wedding or get ready for a new baby.

I think I’d like for her to hear this:

I loved you before I even knew you were coming. I loved you because I loved your daddy and being his wife made me proud. Sharing you with him has been the greatest joy of my life. I loved you when you were helpless and needy and waking me up in the middle of the night. When you didn’t have the words to explain what you wanted and you tantrummed and screamed and misbehaved. There were moments when I got so angry with you that I had to walk away. It’s called justifiable rage and you’ve felt it, too. I walked away because I loved you. I loved you when you made silly jokes and when your laughter hit that spontaneous note, the one I imagined bursting into bubbles and fairies and dandelion seeds on the breeze. I loved you when you sang and danced along with whatever you were watching on TV. I loved you in costumes and pajamas and dressed up for the daddy-daughter dance. I loved you when you said you wanted to be a writer and an entrepreneur and when you asked if that would leave time for also being a rock star. I loved you playing cards and eating chicken nuggets at Beef O’Brady’s and riding in the front seat of Brandi on the way to school. For every minute of my life I’ve loved you and that love has changed me. It’s made me a better person. It’s made me want to be a better person. It’s made me want so many things. And I want to be here with you. Forever. But I can’t be. And that’s got to be okay. You’ve got to be okay. No amount of time with you would ever be enough. So the time I was granted, that has to be okay.

The most important things my Hollie needs to know I wouldn’t be around to teach her. I’d depend on the people in her life to remind her of them. Here they are so you’ll all know what I want her to hear every single day:

1. You are loved.
2. You are exactly who you’re supposed to be and you are wonderful.
3. Be yourself. Always.
4. Have ambition. Let it lead you, let it motivate you, but don’t let it consume you.
5. Love wastefully. You’ll never run out and the hurt is always worth it.

When I think of those girls knowing these were the last few months they would have with Joyce, I imagine them snuggling with her and breathing her in. The way all of us moms hold our babies tight and breathe them in.

No amount of time is ever enough. But it’s what we get. I have resolved to be grateful for it and to make the most of it. That’s the only thing I can do for Joyce now and the lesson I’m so glad she taught me. 

Thank you, Joyce. Rest in peace, sweet lady. You will be missed.

A Mom's Lesson to her Unbrushed Princess

We don’t brush Hollie’s hair on Sundays. Well, not if we can help it.

Every weekday morning after she’s prodded from bed, stuffed into clothing, and dragged into the hallway, Hollie is propped up at the bathroom sink for a teeth scrub and a hair styling.

She hates this.

“I’m sooooooo tired!” she wails.

“You’re hurting me!” she grouses.

“Oowww! MOOOOOM!”

There are no witnesses to this nonsense except me and someday these mornings will be long gone and I’ll get nostalgic thinking of them. But as they’re happening, I feel like Eleanor Bear in Brave.

“Och, you’re acting like a child!”

Of course she is.

I like to let her be one as much as I can. I like to let her be petulant and reluctant and pouty and emotional as much as I can.

There will come a time when she must control these emotions. When she must conceal her frustration, her annoyance, her anger. 

There will come a time when she will be so busy being polite that she’ll forget to be herself.

She may one day catch herself in that moment and think, “How have I become the silly woman who smiles and nods while I’m screaming inside?”

It’s taken me a long time to define the boundaries between being myself and being someone others find acceptable. For years I lived under the mantra of “Be Yourself,” and believed that in all things, myself was good enough.

Then someone told me it wasn’t.

And I believed that person.

I know there will come a day when Hollie thinks being herself isn’t enough. I hope she’ll ask me about it. I hope she’ll say, “Mom, what should I do?”

So that I can say, “You’re more than enough. You’re amazing. You’re brilliant. You’re lovely. If other people don’t like you for who you are, that’s their own problem.”

Because, really, the very best lesson I can teach her is to have the grit to persevere. She shouldn’t kneel before adversity and hope to be blessed by others’ power. She should stand tall, take aim, and loose another arrow. 

Aye, keep shooting until the Self-Doubt and Insecurity are vanquished. 

On Sundays, she gets just a little taste of that. She gets to be a ragamuffin: tangled, tousled, knotty, and free. She gets to be herself in all her untamed glory.

It’s as much a break for her as it is for me. One day a week I don’t have to hold her down and rip the brush through the knots. One day a week where I have to forget about what others might think of the ragamuffin we’ve brought to Applebees or to Publix.

One day a week when I have to remind myself that it’s no one else’s damn business why she looks like a disaster.

Fuck them.

One day a week that I get to remember when I got my tattoos, when I pierced my tongue, when I started cussing in front of grown-ups and stopped pretending to have a faith I don’t.

I know she’s a child. I know it’s my job to teach her how to behave around others. I also know that she’s learning that. Really. 

I get manners. I get polite company. I get that she needs to be able to move among society and that people’s opinions of her will largely impact how successfully she is able to do that.

This un-brushed hair thing is a phase, like wearing two different shoes was. She’s outgrown that and she’ll outgrow this. But I let her wear a boot and a sandal. A flip flop and a sneaker. A sparkly red shoe and a sparkly black shoe because those small freedoms built her confidence.

She’ll match her clothing someday.

She’ll brush her hair.

She’s a child now but she will not always be.

If I have any say in it, though, she’ll always be original, confident, and willing to be herself even when others disapprove.

Just so long as she does not place her weapons on the table.

Notes on a Senseless Tragedy

Chris Deaver, a local musician, was senselessly murdered while working in a pawn shop in Florence, S.C.

I didn’t know him.  I know his fiancé and have spent some time with his daughter. They are lovely. It is easy to imagine their laughter would have been like music to Chris. Now, though, their hurt and sadness coat them like scales they cannot shed.

I imagine myself and HB in their position and my eyes fill with tears.

Police named robbery the motive for the crime but reported the murderer had considered killing before this particular crime. He is a disturbed individual who does not seem to have even an elementary understanding of right and wrong. He is too young to be a “career” criminal, but last spring he made a choice and he is not a victim.

Every element of this story saddens. This editorial tries to pinpoint the source of this sadness.  Everyone knows about the victims, and so this piece tries to turn the tables. It describes the courtroom and one person’s brief eye contact with the accused. Eye contact and the appearance of a slight smile on a killer’s face.  Just 17 at the time of the crime, just 18 now, he is human after all, the writer says.

The sadness in the editorial is apparent, but the writer doesn’t adequately explain what is so sad. The comments on the editorial are equal parts outraged and the scathing. And they have every right to be.