By Adrienne Garrison
@adrie.garrison

“You’re going to love this hike,” I tell my daughter, glancing over my shoulder. “It’s called Whippoorwill Haunt Trail. Doesn’t that sound magical?” From her silence, I can tell that she isn’t so sure. On a rare morning away from her little brothers, I’ve dragged her out into the early chill of hilly southern Indiana for some “mommy-daughter time.” Tired and voicing her regret about not wearing a sweater, Penny clomps after me in new magenta hiking boots, her moody acquiescence rendering her seven years into something more like seventeen.

I stop to pick up a stick about the length of my arm and forge on, redoubling my efforts at cheerfulness.

“Normally, I like to lead the way when I’m with your dad, but I always let him go first when we hike in the mornings,” I tell her, swiping the branch in front of me in clumsy arcs. “Know why?”

“Why?” she asks.

“Cobwebs,” I say, eyes twinkling. “But the stick works just as well.” She smiles slightly and we keep on, listening for whippoorwills and other songbirds, but the woods are mostly quiet. Two girls walking through the forest on a Wednesday morning, one grown and confident-seeming, looking utterly ridiculous as she waves a stick in front of her, the other small and watching, learning.

The ridiculousness of the scene brings a question to the forefront of my mind, one that has been resting on my chest like an overfamiliar cat in the darkness of night. What am I teaching her? I’ve invited her into this small slice of alone time because I have been carrying a quiet ache around the house these past weeks of missing her, even as she sits across from me at the table, or nods along through our homeschool lessons. When she skips into dance class or kisses me goodbye for her weekly visit to forest school, I wonder how all these hours we spend together seem to amount to so little.

My reverie is interrupted as I glance to my right at the sun shining through the crystalline web of an orb spider, my eyes resting on the creature in the center whose legs radiate outwards from a body the size of my thumbnail.

“Eeeyaaahh!” I scream, jumping to the other side of the path, my body responding before my prefrontal cortex can even come online.

“What? What is it?” Penny says.

“Oh,” I say, laughing. “Sorry, it’s just—a spider. It startled me. But look,” I lift my stick gently, trying to redeem myself, drawing her attention to the beautiful builder resting between the bent limbs beside the trail. She shivers and takes the stick from my hand, passing ahead of me on the path and jabbing at air.

Whatever rhythms we found in the first year as a family of five have felt just out of my reach this school year. My youngest is no longer napping in the morning, and my middle child is in that strange universe that is five years of age, full of big feelings and insurrection and a brain that craves both structure and freedom simultaneously. Penny’s lessons are more robust, and she completes them with both hands cupped over her ears, solving the problems in her head and then rapidly writing the answers before sheltering herself from the barrage of boy noises happening in the room. After a month of this, I startled myself and my husband by reaching out to Penny’s old preschool, the one we attended pre-pandemic, and inquiring about a spot for both boys.

“I don’t feel like anyone is getting what they need,” I tell my husband, recounting the morning I allowed the baby to rub playdough into the carpet because it was the only activity that seemed to keep him quiet.

“Don’t you think that changing course like this will confuse them?” he asks. This is my fear, too, and the root of a feeling of failure. I should have anticipated this challenge, should have known in advance somehow and chosen a better path.

A half-mile into Whippoorwill Haunt, the trail is impassable. A series of downed trees and overgrown brambles lead me off the path, wading through the thicket. I lift my arms overhead, not wanting to feel the creeping touch of the leaves, knowing that behind me, those same leaves are skimming against Penny’s neck and chest.

“I’m sorry, babe. It was spring when I last took this hike. None of this was grown up then.” I shouldn't have brought her here, I think.

She passes the time by starting a game she made up called “Name That Character.” After Mulan, Eeyore, Winn-Dixie, and the girl from Inside Out, we arrive at a footbridge crossing a dry streambed. She goes straight to the middle, her arms out in a T, and begins dancing, tapping her toes and heels in a muted rhythm, her face shining.

A few yards later, we come to a trail marker and she chooses a new direction, up a steep hill called Woodpecker Trail. Winded and leaning forward to manage the incline, I coax her through the final fifteen minutes to the end of our hike. We emerge feeling silly and proud, throwing our arms over one another’s shoulders and smiling for a celebratory selfie. On our way to the car, I wonder whether I should have asked more questions, taken the opportunity to talk her through our thoughts for her younger brothers, but I’m not sure whether to burden her with all of the context, still feeling the weight of my own decisions that have led us into this mess.

I am always searching for the right path in my life, considering every possible way to go and then imagining I can clip into it, like a ropes course, and follow something well-trodden and certain. God hasn’t given me such a course for my parenting, though, no matter how deeply I long for it. Maybe He knows I am prone to putting my faith in the path I’ve chosen, instead of recalling that I have been chosen by Him to care for these children. Regardless, it seems that one of God’s most profound mercies to me as a mother is the regular reminder that I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing.

On our drive home, I play a song written by a collective of female musicians and artists during the first year of the pandemic. I remember how it felt to me, nestled beneath a blanket in my basement after the kids went to bed, to watch the streaming concert of this performance. The skill of the songwriters, bassists, and drummers ignited a deep and profound sense of wonder in the scope of who we are as women, the way that we are called by God, each of us, into intricate and unblazed paths of story, leading us to one another, leading us to Him.

“Listen to this one,” I say to Penny, turning up the volume on my favorite track.

You've been good to me; I am safe to hope
I will dare to believe when the way is long and slow
And I am full of doubt, but You are kind and close
I will trust the detour is the road

The day after I streamed that concert, I brought the kids into the basement to watch it all over again. I hoped that both of them were learning something from this multifaceted display of female giftedness that I couldn’t even begin to show them. Something struck a chord, maybe. One year later, Penny asked for a drumset and began taking lessons.

As desperately as I want to lead her confidently through her childhood, I can only offer this: I am teaching her to be the woman that I am still learning to be. I am a work in progress, stick waving in front of me, startled by small, harmless things. I am teaching her to put one faithful foot in front of the other and believe it will lead somewhere beautiful. As our minivan winds through the hills, I feel my heart resonate with the words in the song all over again, and I’m grateful to know I am not the first mother to feel uncertain of the way, to cling to the mercy of fresh starts and new beginnings, certain that one day it will all make sense.

The title of this essay and the lyrics are excerpted from the song “The Detour” by Sarah Kroger and Savannah Locke in the album FAITHFUL, 2021.

Words and photo by Adrienne Garrison. Adrienne lives in Bloomington, Indiana with her husband and their two little ones. Her essays have appeared in Coffee + Crumbs and New Millennium Writings, and her short story “No Longer Mine” was recently featured in LETTERS Journal. Adrienne believes magic takes the form of heart-to-heart conversations, petit-fours, and walks in the woods. You can find more of her writing on her website and Substack.