The Gift of Girls: a Mini-Memoir on Making it Through

If you’re a mom of teens (and they don’t need to be girls, by the way) READ ON, because I need your help in surviving the next two weeks, and if you don’t help me I’m gonna crack.

“What’s in it for me?” you may well demand.

Prayers. Devotion. A large Campfire Mocha at the local Caribou.

First, a preemptive paragraph about my insane ambitions. On May 1st, my morning prayer was most consoling and my writer’s heart, overflowing with love. I sat down at the computer and cracked my literary knuckles in anticipation. “Because it’s the first of May and I LOVE May, I am hoping to do a post/day every day,” I wrote…

…and I met this goal…

…for a whopping five days.

As an artist, I need like nothing to CREATE and when I don’t create? I start to crack. Once, on our way to the carpool drop-off, I told Maria that I was feeling depressed. “I think maybe you need to make something,” she suggested, and I thought, “Since when did the daughter become wiser than the mom?”

And that’s what I’m here to write about. I have a lump in my throat as I write these words, because I don’t know where I’d be without my girls.

Also? Right now I’m cracking, because there’s not a Minnesotan snowball’s chance in hell that I could have met my goal of a blog post a day, and who’s got the time to read all that anyway? More than anything, though, is the pressure of meeting ALL the expectations of a manic month. What I really need is for you to say, “I get it. I’m going through it too, my friend.”

Or just think it. Think LOUD so I can hear you from here.

And now for the mini-memoir part. Right after I gave birth to my oldest daughter, having already had two little boys, I turned to the labor nurse with a weak, happy grin and said, “I got my girl!” She gave my arm a comforting squeeze and smiled back.

“You got your girl.”

Fast forward eighteen years and two more daughters (and two little boys) later. I take a very real pleasure in telling people that I have seven children, “including,” (I pause for dramatic effect), “three teenage daughters!”

Their mouths drop and I nod.

“Right?” I say.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

And so, I’m not going to be a consistent blogger and I’m not able to write a post a day because we have two different proms and a Senior play. We have concerts and soccer games and late night trips to the local Target, where we wander giggling up and down the cosmetic aisles and trade advice on under-eye concealer.

We have a graduation, for crying out loud! And announcements for a grad party that I’ve yet to order.

I’m tired and I’m overwhelmed and my mother’s heart nearly breaks with the stress of navigating this uncertain path. Who am I to parent these three beautiful girls? Who am I? In short, I’m the mom that God has lovingly called to one of the most demanding vocations on the PLANET and the Good News is:

I’m not alone.

 

…to be cont.

(maybe

The post The Gift of Girls: a Mini-Memoir on Making it Through appeared first on Minnesota Mom.