By Lacey Schmidt
@lacianne.schmidt

Today the temperatures will reach 108℉, a dry heat that when we moved to El Paso, I didn’t believe in. After burning my bare feet on the pavement more than once and allowing creamer to spoil on the 30 minute drive home, I get it now. 

I actually understand a lot of things I didn’t grasp when I moved here six years ago, with an 18-month-old and just turned three-year-old in tow and the ink on my divorce papers still fresh. I had taken a promotion I wasn’t sure I could deliver on, and planned to be here a few years. If it didn’t work out, we could always go back home. This assumption became like many others that never grew into reality, like my surety that my kids were always going to be little, no one in my family would ever sleep through the night, and my confidence would always stay small in the fist of my ex-husband. 

Lately, my not-so-little boys and I have been getting our house ready to sell, as I received another promotion that required yet another cross country move. When I say “we” I really do mean we: my kids have spent weeks purging their rooms, hauling out garbage bags full of broken toys, scribbled on papers, board games and puzzles missing pieces. Piles of outgrown clothes and books we once read over and over have found new homes. 

Last weekend they started to pull out furniture that “we won’t use until the new house, Mom,” and I considered pulling out a bucket of soapy water to tackle a project I’d yet to find the energy for: the exterior walls of our house. During our first few months here, in exasperation over trying to make dinner, I told my oldest son, who will be in fourth grade this fall, “Go outside and write your name everywhere! Here’s some chalk! Just go!”

Words matter, and then I didn’t understand how much. Everywhere to a toddler, means everywhere. To me, it meant on the concrete patio. Instead, I found his uneven letters lining up the stucco walls of our new home. At first, I laughed. After dinner, I cried. It was all over the back walls of our house and I barely had the energy to take care of our basic needs, much less clean stucco. So I left his names there, telling the story over and over to visitors, and to him. I positioned that evening as an example of creativity, my almost failure turning into triumph by exhibiting patience when I wasn’t clear enough, versus incredulity, on display now for years. 

Over time, rain washed off some of the scribbled letters. In other places the chalk letters brushed off on the kids’ clothes and limbs as they slammed into walls and learned to ride skateboards. High winds took a few characters. But somehow the letters closest to our back door were left as clear as the day his chubby hand scrawled them, and I don’t expect our home’s next buyers to see the creativity I now do. 

When my son first approached those walls, chalk in hand, I thought so much would last forever, despite the parents of older children encouraging me in airports, parks, and grocery stores. They grow up so fast. Savor these moments... just like that, they are gone. Grown-up, they won’t need you so much. 

Just like that. It could not be true. When a weekend feels like a lifetime, how could things ever be different than this?

Today, I pour a bucket of water, bringing it to the stucco, rubbing the chalk letters with my finger, testing how stuck the chalk was to the paint. I can’t help recalling the toddler who wrote these crooked letters, and I can’t help but think about how it had all changed, like everyone had said it would. We’d just put our dream home under contract on the east coast. I was in a new role that I didn’t worry as much about failing in. We slept through the night. In our own beds. At least most of the time. 

We had made our own home, and would do it again. There was no going back: we didn’t need to.

Just like that. It had become different. 

Yesterday, a Friday, my kids brought home their achievement certificates as the school year wound down. “Most improved in online learning.” “Top speller!” “Master… ” I cried as they proudly showed me each signed award, explaining what their teacher had said, reminding me of how far we had come in this pandemic year. 

I can still feel the panic that coursed through my body the first week of the pandemic as I led the dogs and kids through the neighborhood streets we never had time to explore before. The kids were on extended spring break, though in other states, schools were already moving to virtual learning. I parent alone: how am I going to work and school them? I am already so tired. How am I going to do this? 

These words stayed on repeat for weeks as we discovered our neighborhood, each day waving to people we had maybe run into a few times a year. Just like that, we moved into lock down and days turned into weeks, weeks into months, months into a year of us mostly staying at home.  

What once seemed inconceivable has become something I already miss. To my surprise, under circumstances that once seemed impossible to survive, we thrived. 

If I could go back to that version of myself in the early days of the pandemic, I would tell her: Relax. You make good decisions, you have navigated hard things already. You will know when it’s time to pile the boys into bed at 6 pm to watch a movie because you are all exhausted. You will realize when they need more help in school and you will give that to them. You will also know when it’s time to order take-in because you just can’t cook one more meal. 

I would say the same to the mother who moved into this house six years ago, who didn’t yet grasp the inevitability of how big she, and her kids, would get within these walls. 

“Mom! Mom! Mom!” the child who once wrote his name on the wall burst through the backdoor. “What are you doing?”

“Washing off your name,” I smile at him. We’ve talked about this, and I took his photo next to his three-year-old handwriting before I contemplated how to get it off. 

He nods. “Pretty funny I did that. You told me to write my name everywhere and I thought you really meant everywhere. I was pretty smart for a three-year-old.” 

I laugh. “And I needed to learn how to be careful with my words. I think I’m still learning that.”

“Yeah, but, Mom, you are getting better. Can I help?” He runs to get the hose. In minutes, we are watching his name, etched all these years on our home, drip onto the patio. 

He grabs the broom, brushing the puddles into the grass. I touch the wall where a toddler once wrote his name proudly “everywhere,” while his mom was inside plating dinner with his brother on her hip, frazzled, uncertain. I turn back to the yard, where my other child has joined us with the dog, splashing in the puddles forming on the patio.  

“Hey! Why are you so dry?” I holler, sending the spray of water towards them both. 

My oldest bursts out laughing, “Mom? Did you mean to do that?”

“Do what?” I tease, waving the hose at him again. 

He screeches as his sibling yells, “What about me?” and I fling water at him too. 

“Mom, I think taking off my names is a little emotional for all of us. It’s been here like the entire time we’ve lived here!” my dripping son now says to me, gesturing towards where his toddler letters once were.

“I have no idea what you are talking about, and why are you so wet?!” I holler, sending the hose back in his direction. 

Just like that, it’s a water fight. Another summer evening, a memory we will all talk about: the night we washed away the chalk letters that had rested on our walls for years, and made something hard into something worth remembering. 

Guest essay written by Exhale member Lacey Schmidt. “My mom does everything,” is how her then three-year-old once described Lacey. Most days, it feels true. Solo parent to Miles and Jack, Lacey is an HR leader by career, Mom always, and all else in the cracks she can find.

Photo by Lottie Caiella.