Trying Again

I’m sharing writing at Sharing Our Stories: Magic in a Blog.

My daughter sat in the cozy armchair, her tear-filled eyes trained right on me. “Book club,” she said, and I sat back too, startled that we had both forgotten. 

She’d read the whole book the night she got it, two months ago, and had been excited to discuss it after school with her friends and some of her favorite teachers. She made sure I knew the date and when to pick her up after it was finished. I remembered to make arrangements for her brother so she could stay. We were set.

And then we both forgot it all.

She came home with her brother, and I worked later than I intended, and neither of us thought about her book club at all until she was recounting the events of her day. Those big brown eyes stayed on me while her face crumpled in disappointment. Missing her book club wasn’t the end of her world, but still, she was waiting for me to make it better.

Middle school exists in my memory as blurs of feeling shaped around vignettes in varying flashes of clarity. I see the lockers, the tiled floor, the maps behind my social studies teacher’s head. I remember the magic of Shakespeare opening around the pages of Twelfth Night. I smell the coffee wafting from teachers’ mugs and see the scrawls of revisions I made with my wonderful teachers’ guidance. I feel the comfort of my friends’ presence. But most of all, I remember my parents.

My mom taught kindergarten at my K-8 school, and my dad dropped us off there in the mornings on his way to the high school, where many years later, he and I would teach together. In the afternoons, I told about my days just like my daughter does now, letting go of every little thing I had desperately needed to tell someone all day long. There were big things and little things that didn’t sit right in my mind until I could say it out loud to one of them and hear it reflected back to me in a way that took the stress and the sting right out.

I remember their hugs. I remember how they listened. I remember their support gave me courage to try again when I felt like I had made a mess. 

I looked back at my kiddo who looks so much like me. I gave her a hug. I told her I’d help her work it out.

I spend a lot of time worrying about being a good parent, but I think that was all she was really waiting for.