No. 21

I’ve got this, mama. 

[No. 21]

WHAT IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THING YOU’VE EVER SEEN?

My daughter.

“But it was good to think he had this to come back to this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome.”

Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

It is early June as we wait at LAX and watch the clock tick toward her boarding time; the morning air holds something new between us. We have been in this Southwest terminal before, when she came and went from the same summer camp in rural Missouri. This year, she is a counselor. She is no longer my young camper, and somehow I feel a cosmic shift in my bones. We stand in silence at the gate. I walk her as far as they allow, and then we hug. My eyes well up as she steps onto the plane, out of sight, writing a new chapter for each of us and both of us, together. Power.

On the drive back to my house, my mind races. In past years this camp has provided a sense of levity, anticipation even, for both of us. This year I keep coming back to a chat I had with my friend Talila about the word poignant and its root, [PUGNUS], the same as the root for fist. This departure I feel in my bones is her arrival, and it lands with a thud. Like a horse. Like a drum.

I rattle around the empty house and seek to piece together my chaos. Akin to cotton candy, there is a stickiness, but one that I cannot hold onto long enough to taste. Still, it taunts me as I reorganize the pantry like a maniac. I miss her a lot. I find tenderness, reflection, gratitude, connection, and ache. There is a part of me that wants to write her a letter; there is a part of me that wants to pick her up. 

My mom likes to tell me that I came into this world with ease and speed. Every year on my birthday, she reminds me that she was in and out of labor in less than 4 hours. Fast and furious, there was no time for relief. The die had been cast. I was a good baby and remained an easy child . 

“This is not the sound of a new man

Or crispy realization

It’s the sound of the unlocking and the lift away

Your love will be safe with me”

Bon Iver

When I got pregnant, I imagined it might be the same. The fates had something else in mind; I pushed and breathed for 19 hours with late onset preeclampsia to bring my daughter into the great unknown. Then, I was told I could not hold her on my own until the magnesium sulfate wore off [3 days later]! While she and her dad soundly slept in our small hospital room, I lay awake in my drug-induced state, panicking about everything. [WHAT IF I FALL WHILE CLIMBING THE STAIRS AND SHE IS IN MY HANDS?] I so desperately desired to do right by her. 

Then, she cried for three months straight. Three. Months. She and I experienced excruciating pain from the thrush that plagued my breasts and her mouth as I struggled to feed her, and for the last four months of her first year of life, I was again unable to hold her on my own [after my double mastectomy]. The waters were choppy from the start. The tides kept changing.

At times, I felt separate from most things that made mothers around me swoon. The harder I pushed to love the language and rules that I had been taught, the more the playbook morphed into a foreign tongue, a Tower of Babel, and I found myself on my knees, begging for mercy. [ANGELS, PLEASE, HELP ME.]

Then, she started writing poetry. She moved me. She taught me.
She cooked for me on Mother’s Day and made it feel like Christmas.
She looks like a painted angel, her green eyes storing thousands of years of myths and lifetimes that mystify me.

I had always thought that we succeed as humans, as parents, as children, by holding it all together. I was wrong.

Pretending everything is perfect is actually how you suffocate. The way that she began to take up space taught me to forgo it, to share it, to claim it, to appreciate it. Then, in that vastness, she found herself, and so did I. 

She is now sixteen.
She is in Missouri.

In the corners of our worlds, we have fostered trust. She finds the words to ask for what she wants and needs.

[I’VE GOT THIS, MAMA.] 

From messy, dusty land, she unearthed the crystals of her spirit, her independence, her brilliance. As she grows gilded wings, I discover some jewels in my pocket as well, clues to bring me to my own expansion. Maybe every story is a coming of age story. 

When I told her last year that I am non-binary, she smiled wide. She built a house for it in her heart and began to play around with they/them pronouns. Oh, to be seen clearly by eyeballs that came from inside of you! I told her of the mystery of my queerness, of how I am more attracted to a person’s energy than their shell. She said, “I understand.”

We know that when we let go, we flourish. With my child, the most gorgeous thing for me has been to witness the blossoming of our distinctiveness. She and I have begun to create space for the bigness of each other. In doing so, we are becoming each other’s fiercest allies. Or maybe we always were.

The other day, I went to a gathering that my friend and editor Verônika put together, a dance party for PRIDE. I made new friends from Australia! When I got back to the house, I checked the mail and saw a camp letter. I gasped with joy. After meticulously cleaning the cabins, she wrote, my daughter welcomed her campers! Friends. So many friends. Roots and leaves and vines.

Growing.
Grown.

Parenting [AND BEING IN RELATION IN GENERAL] is less about knowing the way and more about finding the path together. Plus when we listen very openly, and with no agenda and hands outstretched, we find the scenic route. 

“You understand that often their gains are our losses, and although we fight for our children and want to protect them as best we can, there comes a time when we have to let them go, in acceptance and gratitude, to be as they wish to be.”
Nick Cave

My kid comes back from camp fierce and exhausted. I am fierce and exhausted as well. Wind-swept from the goosebumped reverie of our own sobering adventures. Regardless of anything that could have happened in days or nights or lifetimes prior, I wait at the Southwest terminal drinking a mediocre matcha with fervent curiosity about the girl I welcome back into my arms. 

I hug her like my reputation depends on it. 
I am so glad to see her again. 

We will greet whatever comes next together.
We will watch Ted Lasso and travel the globe and talk of peace and justice.

And it will feel like home.

WHAT IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THING YOU’VE EVER SEEN?