What I Can't Give You

The idea arrives unbidden, unexpected, but like the scent of a beloved candle, it’s welcome. Compulsively—as if immediately is the only option—I pick up my phone. Like an itch I can’t help but scratch, I search for how to attend what may be, could be, the cultural phenomenon of the year.

But I do not need to be there.

I am no teen, tween, college kid, or millennial. And I was not a teen, tween, or even a college kid when this singing icon made her original debut. Back then, I was a just few months into new motherhood, surviving daily life in a cocoon of diapers and nap schedules, singing Jesus Loves Me and You Are My Sunshine to a child I was both enamored with and scared to death of, wholly oblivious to the whims of the outside world.

Sixteen years later, while I can’t say I’m a raving fan of this woman, I’m not not a fan of her either.

But my oldest daughter, solidly in the middle of her teenage years, is. This child has not lived a year of her life without this artist’s songs in the world. And she would love nothing more than to hear those songs sung live on stage.

I enter my email into some convoluted system. Minutes later, I am on a waiting list for another waiting list for a very specific date three weeks in the future.

Which is to say: I am now (somehow) (miraculously?) in line to buy Taylor Swift tickets.

***

The packing list lived in my head in a fuzzy sort of way. We needed snow pants, gloves, long underwear, and layers. But to start actually packing required me to create a concrete image and fill in the blanks. Does that kid have wool socks? Does this child need a better hat?

My dad turned seventy-five this winter, which sounds like a nice age to go out to dinner and celebrate with a steak and a fancy cake. Maybe sparkler candles? But for his birthday, he decided he wanted to take his family skiing. Bless him.

Each time I said, “My dad’s taking us skiing,” the response was the same. “Your 75-year-old dad still skis?”

It’s only when I heard the surprise in someone else’s voice that his age would strike me as potentially unusual, let alone dangerous. When is it too much to be buckled and bound onto two thin boards of waxed fiberglass and pointed downhill?

I started skiing in sixth grade, in a school program that gave students one lesson and one lift ticket every Saturday morning at a very local, very unremarkable, very small hill in Ohio. My dad, having to drive me each week, eventually figured he might as well stay and try it out, too. Dad then coaxed Mom, who came once or twice, but she fell too much to ever get a hint she’d enjoy it. She didn’t mind the cute matching jacket and pants or having a cup of coffee in the lodge, though. But Dad had fallen in love.

By the time my siblings were old enough to join, Mom, brilliantly, bowed out altogether—giving herself the gift of a quiet start to the weekend.

Through the years, Dad became so committed to this winter sport, we all had annual passes to that dinky hill and spent a week over winter break on the slopes of Pennsylvania or West Virginia in a rental house shared with two families from our church.

When Chris and I got married, I envisioned us raising little skiers. After my oldest was born, I dreamed of dressing her in navy blue snow pants with hot pink squares at the knees. I hoped to strap her into a harness and follow her down the green runs saying “Make your pizza!” from ten feet behind.

But life doesn’t always turn out in the way that we expect. Or give us what we want.

***

I am at home, sitting in my living room when my phone buzzes. Magically, inexplicably, I have been texted a code. These enchanted numbers are my entrance, password, secret key—to a virtual line in which I will spend much of the next day waiting.

***

Growing up, we lived only a handful of miles away from most of our extended family. We spent so much time with them so often, by the time I was twelve, I could close my eyes on the way to or from their houses, and just by paying attention to the speed of the car, the direction of the turns, I’d know exactly where we were on the drive.

My senior year of high school, Mom and I were driving home from my aunt and uncle’s house late in the evening. The big tudor house I loved (and decided I wanted to live in one just like it), had white Christmas lights up when we passed.

Mom drove and I sat across from her, my siblings were probably falling asleep in the back seats of the minivan. I was in a mood, as teenagers often are, and I might have brought up college, or going skiing, but I eventually dug in on the topic of Christmas.

Mom drove past the house I loved and took a left at the next intersection, so we’d pass the large brick colonial she loved. More twinkle lights dotted those bushes when we passed.

“I don’t get it,” I whined, “I just want to have a nice sweater like everyone else.”

“You have nice sweaters,” Mom responded.

“No,” I shot back, “like, ones from Eddie Bauer.”

All I could think of was what I didn’t have. What all my friends had. Never mind I had an all-season ski pass or that we went on vacation to the beach every summer. I didn’t think about my parents trying to figure out how to pay for my college, even while my mom’s health declined with no explanation. All my parents did and provided for me wasn’t on my mind back then. In the moment, I just wanted that damn sweater.

Mom gripped the steering wheel and I remember her saying nothing. Frustrated, I huffed and turned to stare out my window, to the stars, into the darkness of night.

***

I sit at the computer, fingers shaking.

I cannot believe I am so nervous. Do not enter this code wrong, I tell myself.

At the same exact time I am supposed to enter the code, I am welcomed into a virtual appointment. I’d debated canceling but instead say hello and immediately apologize and admit, “I was five minutes late because I am in line for Taylor Swift tickets … ”

What I am also saying is: I might hang up on you without warning.

But no need to give an explanation. The woman on the screen is a mother of daughters herself, she says. And then she laughs. “I’m actually getting texts as we talk—she admits. Her oldest is in this virtual line, just like me.

***

At Christmas, I unwrapped a large cream box. A smile I couldn’t hide appeared while I smoothed my hand over the words “Eddie Bauer” written in brand script. I opened the top, pulled away tissue paper. Folded inside was a slightly scratchy olive green wool sweater with wood buttons at the neck. I could feel Mom’s smile when I held it up and hugged it to my chest. “Thank you!” I’d said.

We weren’t going away to ski that winter break. As a swimmer whose major practices took place over those two weeks, I didn’t mind. But that’s also because I didn't realize the reason we were staying home was beyond the scope of my imagination.

Who would ever think that we’d never go away as a family ever again, or that the sweater I wanted so badly, then kept in my closet for the next twenty years, would be the last Christmas gift my mother ever gave me?

***

The campus is sprawling, and we arrive on a sun-drenched day. My daughter and I sit next to each other and listen to a man tell the group the history of the school. Afterward, we walk across the quad, past tree-lined brick buildings, pink buds are just starting to bloom on trees.

When my mom got sick, college visits were the last thing on my parents’ minds. I applied to schools on whose grounds I’d never set a foot on. And though I’d been accepted to my top choice university, after Mom died that summer, I withdrew. Instead, I applied to the local state university, the one I could attend while still living at home. I simply couldn’t imagine leaving my dad, brother, and sister—the three of them at home without me. The family that was, just two months ago, five.

Sitting with my daughter, I tell her, “This is my first college visit, too.”

We walk through the business building and follow the docent into the library. When I read about where they hold graduation, my voice cracks, remembering my own college graduation: a gorgeous Mother’s Day in May. One I celebrated without my mother.

On our drive home, I admit that I don’t know how to launch her into the world. I’ve never done this before. “I didn’t have this experience,” I say.

And then I tell her two true things: “I am sad”—for what I didn’t have. And also, “I am so happy”—that I can give you this.

***

After the online appointment, I spend the next six hours sitting at the computer. By late afternoon, the waiting line becomes a waiting room (my stomach starts to flip here), and then the number that’s stayed at 2000+ for hours changes to 1600, then 895, then drops to 398. By the time it’s under two hundred, my heart pounds so hard my face is pulsing. I want this so badly, it pains me.

It’s not the tickets themselves. Not exactly.

It’s that with so much I can’t give my daughter—skiing, clothes, all the things teenagers want that “all their friends have”—I’m also pained by so much I never had.

Not sweaters, not even college visits. Nothing material.

My mom wasn’t there when I took my first shaking steps into adulthood. I had no one’s hand to hold onto. I didn’t get to choose when to let go.

There’s so much I can’t give my daughter.

But I can wait in a virtual line, almost all day, and at the whim of the computer algorithms, purchase tickets for a concert I hope she remembers for a lifetime.

I do not know what the future holds for either of us.

Only that right now, I can give her this.

Sonya Spillmann lives in the DC area with her husband and four kids. She is a staff writer for Coffee + Crumbs and also writes on her blog. You can sign up for her newsletter and listen to her and Adrienne on the Exhale podcast every month.

Photo by Jennifer Floyd.

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