For All We Couldn't Be

By Sonya Spillmann
@sonyaspillmann

My oldest, Nadia, left for school this morning. Before she walked out the door, I took her head into my hands and kissed her forehead. “You have your masks?” Yes, Mom. “You look beautiful,” I said. She smiled. Then I told her how smart she was and that even though she was nervous, I was confident the day would go well. (I had no ability to know, let alone guarantee this would be true, but I said it anyway.) I stood to hug her with an awkward lean, a result of the surgery I just had, then said goodbye.    

She and her dad walked out the door (we’d forgotten to sign her up for the bus) and the dog began to whine like a disappointed toddler when they drove away. My younger kids were already awake and playing in the living room—their school wouldn’t start for another two hours.

My husband came home fifteen minutes later to report the first high school drop-off ever went “fine.” Since my surgery, he’s been in charge of everything. Breakfast, bedtime, laundry, dishes, his work, the kids’ school work, anything I need, anything anyone needs. “Do you mind if I go for a run?” he asks, looking outside to the wanting-to-be-spring sunshine, knowing if he hurried, he could squeeze it in before a scheduled work call.

“Go,” I said. This is one thing I can do for him these days.

He left and I sat on the couch with a book in my lap, though I didn’t read a word. The little ones played magna-tiles near my feet, and though I am still in an acute phase of recovery, I felt—well, in that moment, I felt well. I felt okay.

Well and okay walk a fine line these days—really, they have for the last year—and at present, there is no margin for error. The tiniest bit of overexertion puts me back in bed. The smallest glitch of communication drains me to empty.    

Chris returned from his run and I changed from yesterday’s pajamas to today’s, then laid back down in bed to rest. I had five pillows behind me, two under my knees. The room is small, so I like to leave the curtains open—as if to remind me there’s an entire world outside of these four walls. On this day the sky was porcelain blue. The trees were starting to bud. How nice, I smiled. Spring is coming.

Then for no discernible reason, I began to cry. Without warning, there I was with wet, leaking eyes.

Mayday, mayday: I am not okay. I am no longer doing well. 

Chris opened the door and walked in to ask me a question, just a small detail about the logistics of our life, but before he finished speaking he interrupted himself, “Are you crying?”

I nodded and bit the inside corner of my cheek. In a quiet voice I said, “Yes.”

“Are you okay?” he asked, knowing I could be in pain, or feeling sick—or sad.  

“Yes,” I whispered, though how can Yes, I’m okay be an acceptable response to crying for an unnamable reason? “I think I’m just tired,” I said. It was the most plausible explanation for my enigmatic tears. 

He nodded, then walked into our bathroom but the time he turned back to me, just a few seconds later, I was holding a tissue to one eye, then quickly switched it to the other, then back again, trying to contain a fresh, more intense wave of emotion.  

“What is it?” he asked, genuinely concerned. 

Eyes closed, tears streaming, I shrugged. “Honestly, I don't know,” I said. Yes, I’m tired. Yes, it could be the anesthesia working its way out of my system. Maybe it’s physical discomfort I don’t believe is worthy enough to be considered pain. Maybe it’s the result of a year of tension and unknowns and the weight of every decision seeming to have unpredictable consequences. 

Maybe it’s nothing, for no reason at all. 

Maybe it’s everything, for all the reasons. 

He stared at me for one second too long and my face disintegrated. He paused there, frozen, between the door to the rest of the house and my full-on cry. In the moment, I wanted him to let me be, walk out quietly, but instead he walked toward me and did what I really hoped he’d do—offered his hand into mine, squeezed, then leaned down his bearded face and gave me a gentle kiss on the cheek.

“Rest,” he said and I nodded again and closed my puffy eyes. He walked out and closed the door. 

Alone, I returned to the window, the sky, and the wind swaying the baby-budded tree branches. The tears subsided and I closed my eyes, pulled up the covers, and tucked myself in to rest. My mind wandered past my back yard to my daughter at school a few miles away. Suddenly my eyes shot open—I didn’t take her picture! 

It’s Nadia’s first day of in-person high school and I did not even think to take a picture of her. Oh yes, yes, yes, I can take one when she gets home. I know the work-arounds, but I am a mother who takes first day pictures. It didn’t even cross my mind.

This is a huge day for her—for us. Our first kid in high school, and the first kid in our family to go back to school in an entire year. 

And while our life is nothing close to normal, today felt as if normal was trying to show up, like the little crocuses popping their heads out of the still cold ground, like the buds showing off on the arms of the wind-dancing trees. A hint of what used to be, before. The possibility of what could be, soon.

The tears started up again, but now I recognized them. 

These are tears of grief. 

With my first child being our first child to return to school, and with me not even thinking to take her picture—something I’d always done (during normal times)—the sadness of this entire past year crashed down hard.  

These past twelve months have been a literal and figurative year of cutting out, cutting away, getting sliced open, and waiting to heal. And I couldn’t help but think about what I wish 2020 could have been for our family. What we might have done. What I, as a mom, could have planned or managed or started or taken advantage of. 

At the very least, I want to say I was a mom who made it through this year and did her best. But even that feels like a stretch. For much of the year I, like many of us in our own way for our own reasons, was on the thin edge of okay and not okay, of well and not doing well. And I didn’t do my best. Most of the time, I did the very least. I just made it through. 

And for this, the chasm between ideal and real, I cried. 

For all that we carried and all that we missed.  

For all I couldn’t do. 

For all I couldn’t be.   

When my husband picks my daughter up from school today, I will have him take her picture. I will get out of bed and ask about her day, just like I used to. It will feel a bit like normal, though we all know it isn’t yet.  

Then I will go back to my room to rest. To heal. I will pull the covers back up and look out  towards the window. I’ll continue to feel sad. And then I’ll begin to accept, again, my circumstances. With a long slow deep breath, I will remind myself: yes, there will always be regret in life. But how I made it through this past year will certainly not be one of them.