I was a “young” mom. Newly 21 when I found out I was pregnant, the birthday margarita that I couldn’t finish was the first sign. By Valentine’s Day, I had the positive test to confirm my childhood was completely fading into someone else’s. By July 4th, I was married, my young body warped into a shape I had never known. In September, I had a room set up in a beautiful little house in Athens, Georgia. I felt ready as I read all the books. I had always been a good student. Surely, I could master this motherhood thing? How hard could it be?
Four AM, October 2nd, 2006, I sat awake reading a book in the dim lamp light. I read that Oprah Book Club book from cover to cover as my body started early labor. Sometime around eight, I came to terms with the fact that this was happening. My little girl was ready to make her appearance on her due date. Her punctuality is a vision of the future. I sent her dad to work and went to my doctor’s appointment at two. After a quick check, I was headed to the hospital. I had my suitcase in the car already. I checked myself in, put on my gown, and only then called everyone to come to the hospital. My punctual girl and her independent mama met that night at 9:32.
I embarked on Motherhood that warm October and never looked back. Now, in the hottest August I can remember, I will drive that baby girl to her dorm room in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and I will leave and drive home the hour and a half without her. I am not mourning anything except maybe the journey we took over the last 18 years that no one will truly understand except us. She and I.
Only she will remember walking into kindergarten with her mom, who to her looked like home, but to the world looked like a twenty-five-year-old. Only she will remember the times right after I separated from her dad when we had no car, and we would walk to the bus stop together, that half mile going over spelling words and hopes and dreams. She will remember walking back home those days, stopping at the store for treats, cuddling on the sofa watching movies, and going to bed, just us. She will remember my wedding day and the journey of bonding with a new parent, and the bumps in the road. She will know my impatience, of a young mom, new to this, scared and panicked, I was screwing up, something her brothers probably won’t experience.
She knows my rules, my pet peeves, she knows the words that cut me clean in half, and the love language we share when she needs to apologize, so I come home to a clean kitchen. She will call me, and I will help her as she navigates, on shaking legs, the newness of independence and the uncharted territory of true freedom. She will test boundaries, make mistakes, and find her strength while I watch and listen from afar. I will be ready to help, but I have raised her and know her better than anything, and I know she won’t need much.
She will be a woman, my friend, at long last, after the years of me telling her I was not. My role as a young mother will change, as her brothers, thirteen years younger, have a mother who has been around this block before. Only she knew me as this mama. Only she got the trial-and-error and triumph we saw together, navigating life together. She has seen the best and the worst of me, and I have no doubt she picked up the best and left the rest behind.
I will cry when I get in the car to leave her, knowing it’s just a see you later for now, but for us, the turning of a page in a book we have written together. I will finish this chapter, forty years old, and a million years wiser, because I was a young mom.
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