When she was eight, she assured me she would always stay with me, and that she would always talk to me at dinner time. I'm no fool; I got it in writing.
At the time, I had good reason to be skeptical, even though I could not yet imagine so much as an eye roll from my youngest child. Her siblings were fourteen and fifteen, then, and had already figured out I wasn't the person they had once thought I was. The fall from grace was jarring, even though I knew, deep down, I had not really changed. All good things must end, and the elevated status that comes with being mom to young children is no exception.
I've been lucky in a lot of ways. By the time my youngest breached her promise and had perfected her silent sulk at the dinner table, the older two had resumed diplomatic relations with me. Again, I'm no fool. I knew I was still, in their eyes, pretty dumb, often annoying, and certainly not the person with whom they would choose to hang out for any length of time, but moms learn to take scraps. The truth is I even had my own friends, most of whom are as imperfect as I am. Most of them have also experienced the fall from grace, though to me they have all become more wise and more beautiful with age.
She turns nineteen today, that youngest child who assured me, so many years ago, that she would always stay with me, always talk to me at dinner time. Only one teen year left, and we have, together, weathered much of the storm. When she was fourteen, the sting of my fall was particularly sharp. I no longer had the luxury of a fall back child, one who still could not imagine not loving me and needing me with all her soul. That year, when I drove her to school in the morning, she would sit silently in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead, oozing anger and disdain. As we pulled up to the drop off point, she somehow managed to extract herself from the seat belt and grab all her stuff and slam the car door without so much as a glance in my direction. Then, I would watch, mesmerized, as the nasty little shrew morphed into a friendly, human-like creature with a broad smile and a spring in her step. Busted.
Finally, I confronted her. Not in the morning, mind you, because I think I've mentioned I'm no fool, and even under the best of circumstances she was not pleasant before breakfast. She denied everything at first, but then realized maybe I had a point. For a few blissful days, she grudgingly spoke in the car on the way to school. Well, at least she grunted briefly when i asked her a question. She would sort of turn in my general direction, not totally scowl at me, and she seemed to make a concerted effort to not slam the door. I was in heaven. And relieved, I think, that I might not have to embarrass my kids with a pregnancy in my late forties just so I could have a child who would love me. For a few blissful years, anyway.
The torn and tattered promise still hangs on my bulletin board, surrounded by pictures of all three of my children at various stages of life. She is home from her first year at college, and we are navigating yet another set of new waters as we readjust to living together for a short while. The years of sullen silence are already a blur. I love how she has turned out, how all of them have turned out, but sometimes I am desperate to make time stand still. I feel like the mom in the Subaru commercial, wondering how her toddler can possibly be driving.
We will spend much of her birthday together, and she will even pretend not to mind all that much. We will reminisce, we will justify eating way too many sweets, we will laugh about that old note. I will wonder why the time seems to pass so quickly. She will wonder why everything takes so long.
Like her siblings, she won't always stay with me, and I certainly don't expect her to. But she talks to me at dinner time, and I'll take it.
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