Now I'm Found
By Tamar Mekredijian
@tamarrachelwrites
My daughter tightens her squeeze, gluing our hands together. Tuition is due at her new school, so I park the car in the busy driveway, even though I don’t think I’m supposed to. We go to the office and pay, then step out into the quad where I played hopscotch and four corners as a child—where I learned how to be me among others who seemed so much taller, braver, and smarter. I am giddy at the fact that my daughter gets to attend the school I went to, in my hometown.
It’s pajama day, so we pause to take a picture. Her smile showcases gaps where teeth are missing, adding whimsy to the unicorns prancing across her shirt. If you look closely, her outfit doesn’t quite match. The unicorns on her shirt have different shades of pink hair from the ones on her pants. Other moms take photos of their kids too, and I wonder what it will be like to have clothes unpacked and organized in drawers. It feels so far away, even though we have already been here a month. We have been playing musical chairs in the beds strewn across the spare bedroom at my parent’s house, praying for an offer on our home in Fresno so we can afford our own place here.
Outside her classroom, I bend down to hang her backpack and she breathes a warm Mama, don’t go into my ear. I go through the usual motions of reminding her that she’s doing a great job, that her friends are so excited to see her, and even about the proximity of Grandma’s house to the school. I tell her how much I love her and how proud I am of her. Normally this helps, but today she clings to me. Her eyes well with a sadness I recognize, but one I’ve never seen in her.
“What’s wrong, baby girl? Why are you so upset? Did something happen this morning to make you feel this way?”
By now, we are sitting on the steps that lead down to her classroom from the driveway. I look up and see my car has officially become a nuisance, blocking other cars in. The bell rings and I hope this will be her cue to let go and get in line for the Pledge of Allegiance, but she starts to sob, inconsolable. A mom whose name I don’t know yet gets close enough to ask if we are ok. I nod, but my lips tremble as she walks away.
“Please, Mama. Don’t leave me. Please take me home with you. I want to be with you.”
This is not a tantrum.
It is not a meltdown.
It’s pure fear, and it looks so much like grief for something lost.
When she finally gives in and follows her sweet Kindergarten teacher, who promises my girl she’ll call me if she’s still sad later, I walk to my car quickly, avoiding eye contact with those who are starting to honk.
I cry, wondering if she’ll ever forgive me for walking away and leaving her there to handle this without me, away from everything familiar, where everything is scary and unknown.
***
Please come home, my sister says in her text.
I’m on a date with my boyfriend at Starbucks. In two hours he has to head to the airport to get back to school in Boston. His Burberry cologne wafts to my side of the table and I can’t stop staring at him. I hand him a present, since I won’t see him on his birthday the following month. It’s a journal we can pass back and forth to one another in the mail. He opens it and smiles with his perfect straight teeth.
“I love it,” he says.
My phone buzzes on the table.
Mom is having another episode. It’s a bad one. Please.
He asks if I need help, a little annoyed that I need to cut our time short. I tell him I’ve done this before. I can handle it. Mom would kill me if I brought him home to her now. We embrace in the parking lot while my phone keeps buzzing in my back pocket.
At home, my sister tells me mom wants us to call an ambulance. My mother is pacing the kitchen. She’s crying, and tells us that this time she is certain. This time she believes she is actually dying. But this is what she always says. I take a moment to steady myself—to remind even me this is just a panic attack. I stand in front of her and hold her hands, telling her how to breathe deep and slow.
“Like this,” I say, puffing up my chest, then blowing the air out of my mouth aloud. “Everything is going to be okay, mom.”
“No,” she yells.
So I start to sing and she joins me.
Amazing grace,
how sweet the sound
that saved a wretch like me
Her breath smoothes into rhythm, like the rippling of a quiet creek.
***
“My tummy,” my daughter says, right before the doctor walks in.
The pediatrician introduces herself, and my girl starts to fidget, the sanitary paper crunching under her. I hand her my phone so she can play a game while I chat with the doctor. I tell her about the stomachaches. How they are sporadic, but happen most days. I answer her questions about all of my daughter’s bathroom habits, and then she examines her.
She pushes down on my daughter’s belly.
“We just moved here,” I say. “We are staying with my parents until we can get our own place.”
“When did the stomachaches begin?” she asks.
I think.
“It was the week we started packing our house up.”
I remember the complaints on the morning of our move. The tears as she lay across the couch the movers were getting ready to wrap up. The heating pad that stayed on all morning and was the last thing I stuffed into my purse before we walked out of our empty house for the last time.
When she’s done, she leans forward toward me, and I already know. I hear the words “behavior” and “fear” as she dances around the word I know so well. Anxiety. She doesn’t say it, but it is loud and clear in that small, beige room that I suddenly realize has no windows.
***
I hear him turn the water on and off, and the razor scraping against his face. In the kitchen, my phone lights up with my mom’s call. I screen it. The sun blares in through the double doors leading out to the balcony. I go out and water the plants, squinting to see the bay, the ocean shimmering between the tall, thin trees. It all still feels so new, even though I moved to Rhode Island a few months ago, just after the wedding.
Inside, I count three scoops of coffee into the filter and watch it brew, mug in hand. I watch closely at the creamer cloud that swirls in the black and when I take my first sip, he’s by my side, his hands squeezing my arms, his lips damp and minty against mine.
“Want some?” I ask, even though I know his answer.
“It’s ok. I’m going to grab a cup on my way. What are you up to today?”
I reach behind me and scratch my back, digging my nails in deep. Later, when I’m changing into pajamas, he will point out the red scabs on my skin and I’ll tell him I must’ve done it in my sleep, instead of telling him I do it to feel anything other than the pain I feel inside.
“I have to mop the floors today. And we need groceries. Spaghetti okay for dinner?” I ask, even though I know I will not do any of these things and watch television all day instead.
He grabs his book bag and tells me it sounds great. I watch the front door close.
My phone lights up again, this time with a text. Why haven’t you been picking up? Are you okay, my mom asks.
I rush to the window in our bathroom to watch his car pull out of the lot and wonder if anyone hears my guttural cries as I slide to the ground, knowing how ridiculous this is but unable to control this deep, lingering sadness. My longing for him yet wanting to be alone with it.
I pick up my phone to call my mom back. To tell her I’m not okay. That my doctor gave me pills for depression. But I’m not ready to name my pain, so I put my phone down and say none of those things.
***
Back from dropping my daughter off at school, I compose myself before going back into my mom’s house. I greet her and my son, who are playing in the living room, and then busy myself in the kitchen. I wash dishes. I fill my travel mug with more coffee. I find leftovers from the fridge that have gone bad and throw them away. I pause in front of the refrigerator when I see one of my daughter’s drawings. I squint through my glasses, cloudy with my son’s breakfast.
There’s a pink road. It starts at a small house. Along the road is a little girl and a little boy. She’s holding his hand. At the end of it is a castle with flags and rounded tops. I remember scolding her for pasting these drawings all over the house, until my mom told me it was fine and to let her be. Now I’m running around, trying to find the ones that are still up. I go to the drawing that’s taped in the bathroom above the towels. It’s a picture of the four of us, she had told me while I helped her brush her teeth one night. Mommy, Daddy, me and baby brother. Then I rush over to the one taped to our bedroom door. It’s a picture of a house and the four of us again, abnormally small compared to the house. I look closely and see there are tears on the kids’ faces.
How could I have missed this? This display of emotion—her way of processing this change?
This plea for help, taped all over my parents’ house, loud and clear?
“Honey, are you okay?” my mom asks behind me.
I freeze. I realize I’m sobbing.
“No,” I hear myself whisper.
She puts her hands on my shoulders and sings.
I once was lost
but now I’m found
was blind, but now I see
I open my mouth and breathe, letting her see my fresh tears. My girl’s drawing trembles in my hands, our pain alive, together.
Guest essay written by Tamar Mekredijian. Tamar resides in the Los Angeles area with her husband, daughter, and son. She teaches English Composition online but considers her writing to be her primary work. Writing helps her look at the world closely and understand her place in it as a woman, wife, and mother. She writes in the margins of motherhood—early in the mornings before her kids wake up, during nap times and types notes on her phone in between. Her work also appears at Mothers Always Write and Literary Mama. You can follow her writing and life on Instagram.
Photo by Lottie Caiella.