Reason Number 17: Homework

The seventeenth reason for not crying during your daughter’s senior year of high school is homework.  Homework is a normal part of growing up life, and it is typically not a very treasured one.  Helping with homework is a job that I kind of despise.  I’m neither patient nor a particularly gifted explainer of things and sitting still to meticulously grind through content I mastered decades ago does not thrill me.

While our entire family is lamenting the many activities and responsibilities I’m not capable of engaging in right now due to my lame leg, almost all of my children have celebrated my inability to wriggle away when they sit down to ask for my help with homework.  Since I’m confined to the couch anyway, they have almost all found occasion to plop down next to me with a book or laptop in hand and demand my undivided attention.  Last week, my oldest and my youngest needed the most help—Clay with a book he wanted to read out loud with me, Grace with a writing portfolio project that represented the culmination of a semester’s worth of essays.  After long days spent alone with the dog and the remote control, the presence of their warm young bodies wasn’t altogether unwelcome, though, as I’ve noted, I don’t really like helping with homework.

Clay and I made our way through most of The One and Only Ivan, a book about a shopping mall gorilla and his friends.  The other night, with the fireplace blazing and the early dark bearing down outside, Clay unselfconsciously snuggled up against me, pillowing his head on my belly.  He read several pages, and then he turned it over to me to read, alternating randomly at his whim.  During one of his turns, I looked down at his face in profile—the nose and lashes, the smooth forehead and the impossibly fair hair—and for a heartbeat he was both his beloved self, all rambunctious little boy energy and charm, and his big sister, now so lean and tall and nearly grown.  They look so much alike—blue eyed, golden haired, full lipped and narrow chinned.  Time whooshed forward and back—to the time my girl was small and shy and snuggled securely at my side in the same easy intimacy, to the time he’d be big and hairy and awkward, altogether unwilling to engage in this effortless affection, to the perfect present now.  And I didn’t cry.

Then he read this, and I still kept it fully together.

“I’m scared, Ivan,” she calls from inside the box. “I don’t want to leave you.”

A part of me doesn’t want her to leave either, but I know I can’t tell her that.

“Think of all the amazing stories you can share with your new family,” I say.

Ruby falls silent.

“I’ll tell them your elephant joke,” she says after a long pause.  “The one about the refrigerator.”

“I bet they’d like that.  And be sure to tell them about Bob and Julia and me.”  I clear my throat.  “And Stella.”

“I’ll remember everyone,” Ruby says.  “Especially you.”

Because of course, we’ve already established that crying over books just won’t do.  And besides, this is about an elephant named Ruby and a dog named Bob, not a mom and an almost grown daughter and a fast growing son.  Elephants and moms will always remember.  And, anyway, the girl will come home often with her laundry and her new ideas and new stories for her old family.  We weren’t reading about us.  Not crying.

I’m not crying that for many days after, that big girl sat willingly beside me asking for help with weak verbs and tricky punctuation.  (I am a bit of a grammarian.  And now I feel compelled to note the weak verb (this from Grace’s curriculum) and juicy word (this from Clay’s) in that last sentence).  Grace was visibly impressed with my mastery of language, and, indeed, if I had a superpower, this would be it.  It’s not the sexiest of strengths—this ability to form thoughts and pictures with words relatively effortlessly—but it can be useful.  Words have always been my medium, and I know instinctively where commas belong and how best to punctuate and modify an awkward sentence to make it sing.  Sharing this with my girl—to impress her when so little about me seems worthy of her admiration these days—was a gift and a moment worth remembering.  Not crying. 

She didn’t rest her gleaming head against my body.  She didn’t stumble to read aloud to me, or let me stroke her hair as she worked, so I didn’t cry.  It’s just homework and grammar and fleeting minutes spent on a couch before a fire.  Helping with homework sucks anyway.  I’m not crying.  You’re crying.   

Reason Number 16: Naps

The sixteenth reason for not crying during your daughter’s senior year of high school is napping.  Naps are a regular occurrence for a child during her growing up years, and a delicious lifelong treat in these busy times we live in.  It is a lucky luxury of the young, underappreciated by most until the years when sleep is regularly minimized in the pursuit of other aims—achievement, fun, Nexflix.  It is not a reason to cry.

Last weekend, my busy, busy girl curled up in the overstuffed chair we purchased when I was pregnant with her.  It has probably exceeded its lifecycle, though we all still enjoy flopping onto it for the occasional lazy hour or two.  I looked up from where I sat elevating my sore foot to see this: 

 And I didn’t cry.

 I didn’t, of course, remember that I had been lying on that chair’s matching sofa grimly enduring the early days of morning sickness when I felt the butterfly bubbles of her first movement.  I didn’t recall the infinite wonder, the soul stirring recognition that there was a person in there, and that there was a reason for all this misery.  I didn’t think of all the hours I’ve spent watching that beautiful face at rest, placing a gentle hand on a tiny back to feel her breaths.  I didn’t remember how I once thought, “I love her best when she’s sleeping,” because it’s not true.  In the vast depths of a mother’s love there is no ranking of the precious moments.  They are all dear, all my favorite, all the best.  Not crying.

I didn’t cry to think of my one, terrible attempt at sleep training when Grace was a baby.  I was overwrought and over-read by the time she came along, and though my heart counseled against it, my exhausted body begged for it, so I tried.  I left my bawling infant for 5 infinite minutes.  I heard her wailing, steeled every nerve in my body as it strained towards her, walked calmly to the kitchen, poured a glass of orange juice, drank it down.  Ounce by ounce.  I stood resolutely for a moment, tears streaming down my own cheeks, then ran back to her, clutched her to me, felt her little body shudder and relax against me, and never tried again.  Not crying.

I didn’t cry to think how very many things like that she’s had to endure.  As the oldest child, sometimes she gets the best of me—the focused, engaged, all-up all-in sort of parenting I still had the time and energy for with my firstborn.  But sometimes she gets the worst—the bumbling, uncertain, willing to listen to the experts instead of myself kind of mom.  The kind of mom who is unsure and in uncertainty becomes too much, the kind of mom whose big noisy brain often overwhelms her hesitant heart into disastrous experiments with things like crying it out.  It was only the one time.  And we often co-slept, too, which some experts believe to be equally disastrous.  Did I choose the right paths?  She sleeps peacefully and through the night, now.  She hasn’t come to wake me in the middle of the night for comfort in over a decade.  Not crying.

I didn’t cry about my fur baby, snuggled above my actual baby on that big old comfy chair.  It doesn’t do to cry over puppies when your beautiful human babies are in the same frame.  It’s not sad to think that our little Penny is exactly the same size as a newborn baby, or that she looks at me with the same adulation that once filled her big sister’s face when I walked in the room.  Now I get a lot of eye rolls and abruptness from the girl-baby, but my fur baby never fails to light up with excitement at my presence.  Penny also willingly climbs in my lap, snuggled to my side and always within sight if I’m home.  A lifetime ago, I enjoyed such adoration from the sleeping girl-baby, too.  My friends with older children assure me that eventually teenagers come back to visibly appreciating and enjoying their parent’s company, but these late teen years don’t have much of that.  A puppy is a poor substitute, but it’s still something.  Not crying.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  Sleeping teenagers are nothing to cry about.  Indeed, it would be quite time consuming to cry about it, because they love to sleep.  They are always sleeping.  It’s just catching up on some zzzz’s.  It’s just a nap in an old chair with a little dog.  I’m not crying, you’re crying.

 

Reason Number 15: Being Left Out

The 15th reason for not crying during your daughter’s senior year of high school is being left out. 

I’ve been walking my way into another joint surgery for the last several months, negotiating the timing and the logistics of pulling the family lynch pin for many weeks (possibly as many as twelve).  My doctor warned me mightily ahead of time—about the pain, mostly, but also about the inconvenience and loss of control.  “You weel hate me for three months,” he assured me seriously in his charming Brazilian accent.  “It is only after six that you weel begin to forgeev me.”  I had to answer questionnaires about my mental health and support system (both of which are excellent—perhaps the latter a bit more than the former).  I geared myself up for it and I reviewed the family calendar literally dozens of times as my outbox and text messages and color-coded family calendars can attest.  I knew what I was giving up, and we all agreed the timing was best.  Spring and summer are our best family times.  Winters are spent racing from one activity to the next, and we all decided that my missing a few games and activities was less impactful than giving up spring break travel or summer at the lake.  I knew it would be difficult and I knew I would be left out of some things.  I saw it coming and planned for it.  Not crying.

We scheduled the surgery for after the state championship—a precaution I know in hindsight was unnecessary.  I threaded the needle of my daughter’s final volleyball season as tightly as possible—3 days after the final state game, 4 days before the end of year banquet.  Surely after 4 days I would be well enough to sit in a restaurant with my daughter’s beloved team and share one last meal with all the girls and parents.  Less than a week after my hip replacement last year, photos of me dancing on crutches at my cousin’s wedding surfaced on the internet (they were mostly staged.  But I WAS there, in a party dress with make-up.  Though I ventured cautiously onto the dance floor for a few photos that my weird family begged me to pose for, I actually spent most of the reception holding sleeping babies with my aunts on the sidelines while my siblings and cousins cavorted on the dance floor).   But a hip replacement is not a 12-stage, 6 hour foot surgery and I was nowhere near up to leaving my house for the volleyball banquet.  Not crying.

My husband told me I would “be an idiot” to try and go (while a strong and dedicated caregiver, his bedside manner can be a bit abrupt), and my daughter gave her characteristic shrug and “I don’t care,” before she bolted off to some event up at school with a careless “I’ll meet you there,” tossed over her shoulder on the way out the door.  Not crying.

This volleyball road has been such a fraught one for me and Grace.  We are so heartbreakingly different in so many ways, and as she’s grown and matured I’ve struggled mightily to connect appropriately with her.  She’s aloof and matter of fact about every decision in her life (gets that from her dad) and the emotion I bring to every interaction is distasteful and untrustworthy to her.  Every time I hug her these days I tease her by emulating her stiffness and asking, “Are you done yet?” Because my girl—with all the wonderful characteristics that I love so dearly about her—is not a hugger.  Not crying.

But volleyball was such a bridge for us.  I wrote this back when she was a freshman and deciding whether to play volleyball or swim in high school, and every word of it still rings so true for us.  So much of her perspective, and her experience, differ from mine.  Except in this one way, we have been through the exact same thing.  25 years before she did it, I wore the Wahlert Golden Eagle volleyball uniform and played for a team that brought home a 3rd state title.  We played the same position (she was spectacularly better than I).  Her coach and I share a coach.  It’s a link.  It’s something.  It’s not nothing.  And I missed the last ever chance to share that with her.  Not crying.

It seems brutally ironic (is there any other kind of irony, really?) that part of the reason I spent the hours she was receiving her final high school volleyball recognition flat on my back with my leg propped up on a cushion was because of injuries I suffered during my own high school athletic career, or possibly during my pregnancy with her or one of her siblings.   I couldn’t be there for her last hurrah because of injuries I suffered during my own or in the great hurrah of bringing her into this world.  Or it’s possible I lay there for no justifiable reason at all, just cruel dumb luck, and my trying to make connections that didn’t exist was a stupid waste of time.  Not crying.

It is also FINE that she doesn’t miss me at events like these.  That she sits with her friends and tolerates the photos we snap when we manage to be there.  My friends texted them to me anyway—it’s nothing to cry about.  The fact that I wasn’t missed means I DID MY JOB, because she is ready and willing to be in the world without me.  We both learned the hard and spectacular lessons that varsity athletics have to teach, and, like Tom Hanks famously told Geena Davis in one of my all-time favorite movies, “There’s no crying in baseball!” (Or volleyball, or any sport for that matter).  And so I’m not.  Crying that is.

Grace is so confident in my love that my presence or absence at awards ceremonies like these is just a calendar conflict or matter of unfortunate injury.  She won’t remember my missing this because in the course of her life, I made it a point not to miss much at all.  She might not remember this one time, but I will.  Not crying.

Besides, not every awards assembly this spectacular girl attends is an epic and extraordinary symbol of her achievements.  Indeed, it is much lamented by my generation just how much we celebrate every tiny accomplishment of our offspring.  This event in no way reflected my pride in her, or my devotion to her utter joy and success in life.  It’s just cheeseburgers and certificates and small talk.  It’s just a game we happened to both play for a few years when we were young.  It’s just volleyball.  I’m not crying, you’re crying.