This weekend, the one I’ve loved the longest, in the middle of the normal business of an average blended weekend here, looked up from her canvas at the kitchen table and asked, “Who do you worry about the most anyway, Mom?”
I worry for the world most days, but always a little harder and longer for each daughter.
It would make sense if I worried the most about M who lost so much with her Dad being the way he is. She lost having her first family whole when I ended things for us. Then she lost her new family, after so much emotional effort to bring it into existence, with his second divorce. I could worry that her Dad has taught her contrary things about love and it could cloud the way she is in the world. I could be fearful for her knowing that her first crushes are with other girls…. and when I grew up sometimes that meant you were a walking target in the world for all sorts of insecure or righteous assholes.
Or if I worried the most about A– the alleged favorite in the family– that might make more sense. She is growing up with two big sisters who lack patience and so her start is not one like theirs. Her older siblings don’t make room for mistakes and bad habits or silly things like belting out a tune in the car or watching a movie for the 100th time or taking too long for her turn during a card game– while Match and I endlessly made room for their interests, their habits, and their voices. I worry about what it means when they can’t move over to make room for A to have the same even though there is enough space for us all. I could worry that she hasn’t quite landed with a consistent peer group and that part of it is that I haven’t grown my friendships with parents of her classmates. I could fret over how she struggles to pare her thoughts down to a level other’s can follow without Herculean feats of concentration. I could worry about how much her confidence in her abilities can waver when understanding a new concept or a test score doesn’t come to her easily or land her the grade she wanted. I find myself worrying about how devastated those things make her. She is wrecked and broken for a while.
Or, the baby– who no longer is anything akin to a baby these days– can fill my mind with worries that she is too good for the world. Her heart is soft shelled and she feels so deeply empathically that she can’t just be an outsider to a story. It lives in her and she feels it– the excruciating pain and hurt and fear and love and joy. It is a hard thing to feel the whole world’s story again and again and again. I could worry that she is as often scared as she is happy. She is scared about big things like dying, being ignored when she reaches out to another person, and even about how sometimes privledge isn’t distributed equally in life. I worry she’ll let those feelings swallow her up so much she might struggle to find solid ground in the whirlwind the world’s sad stories creates.
Or the one I see two weekends a month, certain holidays, and three weeks of vacation time a year. I could worry about how it is hard to catch her authentically joyful the past few years. Everything with her seems so tempered, controlled, and measured lately. Then, when something spills out– its usually distaste for a teacher, or tears over some fear I can’t wrap my head around, or angry resignation over things like originally not being able to come on vacation. I worry about all the things that don’t slip out and are instead just internally weighing on her spirit. I worry the kid that used to be encouraging and full of bright sides seems so disillusioned. I worry how she seems to feel above lots of things that used to bring her close to people and lots of things that use to bring her joy. I worry she is building walls and we aren’t sure exactly why. I could worry that she seems lonely even in a group of people she’s know her whole life. I worry that nothing seems consistent for H– she hasn’t had the same four walls, the same school, the same friends, the same sports, or the same transportation for her short thirteen years in the world. Even, after several different ones, the church they landed in has seemed to have faded after all the messages about its vitality in her life. I worry about the weird gaps in her dental and medical care and how therapy seems to be on demand and not a place she can depend on either. What stays the same for her? What does that teach her about being in the world?
So, when my oldest asked, I pushed a truth out into the world that I wanted to make real. I said, “I worry about all of you, for different reasons, all the fricken time, but pretty equally.”
Yet, it was not the actual truth.
I worry about M in the short term way mostly. The cold fingers of worry wrap around my heart when she’s late coming out of school or I let her shop with a friend independently in the mall. She was made for her life and she shows me this again and again. She know the difference between the love her Dad has to give her in this world and the way love is given to her by others. At twelve, she was able to tell him the difference without any guidance from us. She does not carry his broken story in way that softens you despite the fact he lets you down, betrays, lies, and steal from you again and again. She doesn’t let him change her narrative just because she’s still a child and he’s an adult. She can be a good, sympathetic friend with insights I wouldn’t have given her credit for having. She has no problem embarrassing her self to accomplish her goals and so she isn’t held back often. When she wants to, she works damn hard. And she has no qualms about saying no and no qualms accepting life’s gifts with a resounding yes. She is accountable for her actions both good and bad– and often without humility or regret. She is growing up in the world that liking girls is now commonplace because so many trailblazed before her. And so, I don’t worry the most about M because she shows me again and again she can handle her life.
Our middle child still blooms despite the fact she can’t always grow straight. I am told she is funny, kind, and determined in school. I know she has solid, consistent friends in class this year. Girls that care enough to come up with a plan to keep each other safe when the girl drama started this year. I find small plans etched in pencil in a notebook about how they’ll look out for each other at recess. Despite the harshness of other people’s tones and words, not much of the world manages to pierce her. She radiates her own love and it insulates her from most of it. Usually, the thing that breaks her is simply her own doubt and her own crashing expectations… a bad grade, a math concept that’s new and foreign, not winning a competition even though she had a good idea, and when friendship doesn’t bloom with ease out of the school yard. Yet, I know most of these things are fixable and getting better and we’re figuring them out. I can see the evidence and I am reassured that the things that linger are things we can mitigate and grow through.
Despite her getting lost deeply in sadness and heartbreak of other people’s stories, the baby of the family is rooted in hope and love. So, I worry, but life shows me that her softness is also her strength. She spreads love and warms the coldest hearts with her small flame. I am reminded daily that her big feelings are thankfully big both ways. Her being is not lost in fear and sadness and worry. She just knows those things well as she slips herself into someone else’s shoes, imaging and relating to how they feel, and she aches for them. That ache, despite its worrisome nature, fuels the bright flame of love, of hope, and of action. I know, because she shows me, that despite all the pain she is finding the world to hold, that she is able to be held and hold others. She also is not where I worry the most because I see that she can sit with it without shame or questioning and, also, because joy matches her sorrow. These things make me less afraid for her in this wonky place filled with tragic things. My youngest, at five, understands the idea of brutiful and that her softness is a strength.
And so… the truth is that I worry the most about H. Life does not give me the reassurance of seeing her enough that my worries have answers or stories to show me that there is a purpose to them. They sit in a void whirling and whipping up waves like a sea storm. Here, for us, H’s life is a glacier where we see a small 10% and the rest sits under murky water of a life tucked away. That used to be just a physical barrier of distance, but now it feels like even when she’s here she figured out how to tuck more into her internal life. We do not see the people she sees, nor do we hear what they say about her, nor watch her lay on the couch with a friend scrolling through reels laughing, nor see a report card with comments like, “good student,” or if she smiled big unwittingly reading a chapter or over dinner. Her life’s progress, her ups and downs, are weeks of mystery. So… we worry about her the most because we can not see the whole picture. We can not find the reassurance that the worries we hold are actually things that serve a greater purpose. We are forever looking at a puzzle where we hold a few middle pieces, but the rest are someplace else. It is a strange way to raise a child, but a very good lesson in faith without seeing and without the warmth of hope. I worry because I don’t know if she shares who she is with the world and I worry because I’m not sure what taught her not to. I worry that one of the things she holds inside is a need for help and she can’t bring herself to ask for it like her sisters. And, the way our lives have turned out, it is not often I can find out if my worries hold merit.
The three who live here ask to be held, they ask to talk, they ask to be celebrated, they ask to share their lives with other people, they– after moments that aren’t their best– ask for ways to do better or for forgiveness. The kids who are here ask and ask and ask for all sorts of emotional wants and needs– sometimes too many for me to properly handle– but H never asks for things like this here. She never asks for help in life from us– a life we don’t witness much of– and so we worry because she can be many ways in the world, but I’m not sure she realizes all the options in front of her. We worry because with H, that reprieve when you see how your worry is unfolding in the magic of their life, is missing.
So yes, we worry about all the kids. And all different reasons. Constant concern for your child’s wellbeing is just a part of raising children that you learn to carry despite its weight. Ours becomes a little harder to manage with the natural disparities in any blended life. It is the disparities that have H sitting squarely in concerns we always carry without reprieve. Because, most of the time, H is a ghost who lives in our thoughts and actions– for most of the the time we’re mourning her absence and live without the reassurance seeing her regularly gives a parent. We parent her with a whole lot of faith– because life didn’t give us another choice. Faith, in this case, is worry without the hopeful reassurance that seeing a life in full gives you. It is hard, but because we know most of the worries we have for her sisters are constantly debunked by the evidence of their life and because we believe we’re each made for the lives we have– we trust that even though we don’t see the evidence, just like a glacier, the majority of her life we can’t see below the surface is okay. We hold faith that if it wasn’t enough life wouldn’t have made things this way.
We have to trust without verification and it has that rough sandpaper feel to it. We have to trust that when she needs us, she’ll ask for it like her sisters.
So, living this way, I hope that your worries are met with reassurance– and you don’t have to lean on faith alone. But if you have faith as the place you have have to rest the weight of things on– that you know you aren’t alone in it. I hope that thought is the flame of comfort we can cling to and nurture on the days it seems overwhelming, nerve rackingly hard to live on the barren, smallness of a glacier’s tip.
Love, Mom 