This column first appeared in CityView Magazine’s May “Home and Garden” issue.
With Mother’s Day still fresh in my mind, I’d like to offer my reflections on a new era of motherhood into which I have recently entered. While I don’t think there’s an official name for this chapter, I’m fairly certain that “I’m a mom to a middle schooler and am therefore suddenly the most embarrassing human on planet Earth” would be a darn good fit.
For the past 12 years of our lives together, I have known nothing but pure adoration and a constant desire to be in my presence from my daughter. Nothing but my oldest child begging me to chaperone every school field trip, attend all her class parties, come to lunch to sit with her and her friends, and snuggle her until she fell asleep every night. A child who happily held my hand in public, needed not one but two hugs at morning drop-off—no matter who was watching—and excitedly shouted “Hey, Mommy!” across the busy parking lot at afternoon pick-up.
Needless to say, it hit me like a ton of bricks when my girl entered sixth grade and I, her own mother who carried her within my body for nine long months, became an overnight pariah. I will never forget the moment that I realized the dynamic had shifted.
As I walked out of the school building one morning, not long after the start of the school year, one of my daughter’s sweet friends caught me on the sidewalk, gave me a hug, and asked, “Mrs. Claire, can you come to chapel with us today?”
Weekly chapel at my children’s school is a long-standing tradition where parents are invited to attend worship with their kids, alongside their classmates and teachers. My daughter and younger son had always looked forward to with great anticipation, especially on days when I could join them.
I promised that friend that I would try my best to get out of a meeting early and make it back on time for chapel. I told her not to tell my daughter, so she would be extra surprised that I was able to make it after all.
As my meeting wrapped up right on time, I couldn’t wait to get back to the school to surprise my daughter and make good on my promise to her friend. As I’d always done in the past, I signed in, got my visitor’s badge, and made my way to the worship center to wait for my daughter’s class to arrive.
When the sixth graders filed in, I first spotted her friend, who ran up and exclaimed, “Yay! You made it!”
I waited to find my daughter, who I was just sure would greet me with the same gleeful excitement. Instead, when my eyes met hers, the look on her face was more one of horror than happiness.
I knew right away that her wide eyes meant that I should proceed with caution. Our customary hug suddenly seemed like a bad idea.
My middle schooler met me with an awkward little half-wave and whispered through her teeth, “Mom! Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? No one else’s mom is here today! I already told some people I would sit with them … Sorry, is that okay?”
Even though my heart broke into a million pieces in that moment, I tried to play it cool, “Sure, yeah! No problem! I really came for your friend, anyway. She invited me.”
Later that afternoon, after I picked her up from volleyball practice, I could tell that my daughter had been feeling a little guilty all day.
On the ride home, she said, “Mom, I’m really sorry I acted weird when you came to chapel. I don’t mind if you come, I just didn’t know you were, and I was worried you would, like, sing really loud or dance to the songs or say something embarrassing in front of the boys in my class.”
While my feelings were more than a little bruised, I remembered being a sixth grader humiliated by my mom’s brakes on her old van that would squeal when she pulled up to the pick-up line. I used to be mortified when she would show up to eat with me in the school cafeteria with my toddler brother in tow, who insisted on bringing a toy doctor’s kit and performed “check-ups” on the popular boys in my grade. And I was horrified when she was the first to volunteer as the guest reader for my class, and would show up decked out in an outfit that went along with the theme of whatever book she had chosen.
I took that opportunity to ask my daughter if there was anything else I did that embarrassed her. I wasn’t expecting a no-hesitation laundry list.
“Yes!” she said. “When you cheer louder than anyone else at my games, and I can hear you over all the other parents; when you say ‘what’s up pookie?’ to my friends; when you wear those really baggy jeans that are made for, like, teenagers; when you pack, like, only really super healthy stuff in my lunch; when you try to help me carry my bags into school; and when you fix my hair or wipe my face in the parking lot at school in front of everyone!”
“OK. Noted,” was my reply. “I won’t come to chapel unannounced anymore, but just let me know if you ever feel like you’d like me to. But I’m 100% still yelling really loud at your games. That’s nonnegotiable.”
“OK, Mom,” she said. “I love you. Thank you for coming today.”
I’ve spent the rest of the school year trying to give my middle-schooler a little more space. Being there for her when she wants me to be, and backing off when it’s clear that she’s doing just fine on her own. Letting her struggle to carry four bags into school if that’s what she’s intent on doing. Quietly whispering that she has toothpaste on her cheek instead of licking my finger and wiping it off in front of everyone. Throwing a Lunchable and a pack of fruit snacks in her lunchbox here and there and calling it a day, since healthy lunches seem to have suddenly become offensive beyond what one can even bear.
And what I’ve found is that giving her that little bit of space that she didn’t really know how to ask for makes the moments when she just wants her mama even sweeter.
On a recent pretty spring afternoon, my daughter found me folding laundry in my bedroom and asked, “Hey Mom, if you’re not too busy, can you come outside with me and do sidewalk chalk like we did when I was really little?”
I really wanted to scoop her up, smother her in hugs and kisses and say, “My little pookie, there is literally nothing more in this world that I would rather do than come outside and do sidewalk chalk with you right this very instant.”
But I remembered the whole “giving her space” thing and replied simply with, “Yeah, sure, babe. That would be great. Thanks for inviting me.”
On this Mother’s Day, whatever parenting era you are “momming” through, just remember that at the end of the day, the things that tend to embarrass your kiddos are really mostly just big, bold, sometimes loud, usually “super healthy” expressions of your love for them.
They will understand it one day, when they are 40 years old with kids of their own, and realize that their mom drove an old van with squeal-y brakes because her paycheck went to her four kids’ school tuition instead of a shiny new Mercedes.
They will realize that instead of surprising you in the middle school cafeteria, she could have picked your little brother up from preschool, put him down for a nap, and gotten some rest of her own.
And they will realize that the lady standing in the doorway of your classroom in a Cat in the Hat costume, book in hand, is the person who loves you more than anyone.