Nothing and Everything
By Molly Flinkman
@molly_flinkman
It was a tiny moment—in fact, I almost missed it entirely—and yet here I am, still thinking about it, even today.
A few weeks ago, I sat on the edge of the deep end at our favorite public pool. Blue water danced in front of me, and my four kids jumped in and swam nearby. Everything was bright and loud—a peak summer afternoon—when I noticed the lifeguard’s red buoy out of the corner of my eye.
He had reached it out toward a little boy who must have been struggling to make it back to the side. The boy grabbed on to the lifeline, and then the lifeguard pulled him to the side of the pool and helped him climb out. As soon as his feet were back on solid ground, the little boy took off as fast as he could move without running—propelled forward (at least by my observation) by a need to blend back in to the chaos of the pool. I watched him round the corner toward his mom’s chair, and I wondered: Will he tell her?
I tried to watch the next part of his story unfold, but he succeeded in blending back in. I imagined him walking up to his mom and spilling the whole story—what happened and how it had all felt to need the lifeguard’s help for a moment—but I could just as easily imagine him saying nothing of it. Mostly, I pictured him curling up on his pool chair, quietly replaying the scene without ever mentioning it to his mom, and it seemed strange to me in that moment that I might know something of this boy’s life that his mom never would.
It all happened quickly—maybe one total minute of time—and it also felt important and weighty somehow. It sparked a new thought within me, and so, I knew it was a moment I’d return to again and again, brief as it was.
Like the time I bought a tube of coral lipstick at Target.
I only had one toddler at the time. It wasn’t unusual to wander around Target in those days, but, admittedly, on this day, I went to the store specifically for the lipstick. I was suddenly overtaken with the idea that I needed it. My mom wore lipstick. Hers came in shiny, gold tubes, and I use to love watching her apply it when I was a little girl. Moms wear lipstick, I think I had subconsciously reasoned to myself. You’re a mom now, so you need some too. I stood in the aisle for a long time trying to choose the exact right shade. Then, we left, and I tore into the packaging in my car and applied the lipstick with the help of the rearview mirror.
I hated it immediately and simultaneously realized as I stared at the terrible coral color all over my lips that I was trying to dress like a mom—like it was a uniform for which I hadn’t quite acquired all the pieces. I realized in that moment that I’d lost myself a bit. I’d gone to Target that day to try to feel more like a mom. I’d ignored all the indicators that this changed and updated version of myself was still me.
It’s such a miniscule moment in time—a memory I could have easily left behind. And yet, ten years later, I still call it to mind from time to time. It was a little tube of lipstick, and, also, it was something more.
Or kind of like the time I stood in an unfamiliar kitchen and watched my oldest daughter—two years old at the time—eating dinner, surrounded by a gaggle of unfamiliar kids. We had just moved to a new city, and had been invited to a dinner with some other recent transplants. All the other kids were older than ours, and they had met a few times already. So, when they sat on the patio with their paper plates of food, there was a small circle of kids laughing together and—in a different area, alone—there was our daughter.
She was completely oblivious to everything around her, but I stood there in the doorway, caught between two desires: I wanted to swoop in and pull her back to me, so she wouldn’t be alone, and I also wanted to give her an opportunity to practice a little bit of independence. I just stood there—feeling every single beat of my heart–and watched, deeply aware that it was the first time and also far from the last I would feel that tension.
I knew with certainty that I would never forget the feeling of that fleeting moment, and I haven’t. That moment in the doorway shifted something inside me. I have thought of it many times since. I have felt that same palpable feeling many times since.
I am a storehouse of these tiny memories. There’s also the time I looked at a “Spot the Differences” page with my son in his High Five magazine or the time my other son yelled something true about me during an argument. There was the time I ran my fingers through my daughter’s hair during church or the time the kids, and I stepped on as many acorns as we could during a walk. Most recently, our kids worked together at a lemonade stand in our front yard, and that has stirred up something inside of me too.
The more days of motherhood I am given, the more significance I find in the simplest and most mundane things. These are moments and interactions that could be overlooked or written off or even considered silly. Instead, when I pay attention, I find big lessons here. Many of these moments have changed me or realigned my thinking in some way. They are more than they seem. They are worth remembering. They are worth holding on to.
It’s kind of like the time I was reading a book to my boys at bedtime when a simple part of the story choked me up a bit (a regular occurrence around our house, admittedly). I knew I’d start crying if I kept reading, so I paused on the page. I reread the words and studied the pictures, and before I moved on, my son asked, “What are you looking at?”
“Nothing,” I said, but what I really meant was, “Everything.”
Molly Flinkman is a freelance writer from central Iowa where she lives with her husband, Jake, and their four kids. A lover of houseplants, good books, and (in a surprising turn of events) bright colors, she loves to write about how her faith intersects the very ordinary aspects of her life and hopes her words will encourage and support other women along the way. You can connect with Molly on Instagram, through her monthly newsletter, Twenty Somethings, or on her Substack, Common Stories.
Photo by Jennifer Floyd.