By Sonya Spillmann
@sonyaspillmann

I stand in the baby room of my church, twenty years old, in a white dress made of satin and tulle. My best friend Stacey, my sister, and my sister-in-law-to-be wear floor length navy gowns. Friends and family started arriving early, so we’ve been stuck in this room for far too long. I’m nervous. And excited.

Then, the door cracks open. Stacey’s mom slides in and asks with a sneaky smile, “Do you need anything?”—her excuse for coming back here.

We talk for a few minutes, and she makes us all laugh, trying to calm the nerves. Two years after my mom died, I’m grateful she’s willing to step in and mother me in these moments before I get married.

Before she turns to leave, she puts her manicured hands on my shoulders and looks me in the eye. “This will all go so fast.” I nod, obediently listening. “So at some point, while you’re up there,” she’s smiling, but she’s serious—it’s important that I listen. “I want you to pause,” she says. She has the same chestnut brown hair as Stacey’s, she wears a fuschia dress and a diamond set in a wide gold chain around her neck. “Look around,” she tells me. “Take a mental picture.” For one moment, she instructs me, I am to take it all in—all these people, how I feel, the significance of it all. Remember. Remember. Remember.

Somewhere before the vows and the kiss, I will do as she says. I will pause, look out into the pews overflowing with people, to the friends and family, the flowers that line the aisles. I will notice how my big white dress feels draped on my body, and the smoothness of my husband's hands in mine. I will sense all the eyes upon us, the joy hanging in the air, how our future is held in this one single moment.

“Someone told me to do this,” she said of her own wedding, “and I’ve kept the picture with me my whole life.”

***

My daughter is dressed in a sweatshirt and yoga pants, backpack slung over her shoulder, car keys in hand. She holds a half-eaten bagel wrapped in a paper towel, which she will finish on her drive to school.

I walk over and hug her, both my arms wrap her up and squeeze tight. I kiss her forehead right where her hair meets her skin. I remember doing this when she was just a baby, when her hair felt like dusted gold and feathers. “I love you,” I tell her. She nods, still seeming half asleep.

“I’m proud of you,” I say, and she looks at me with a raised eyebrow, suspicious. “What?” I ask. “I am.”

“I’m just going to school,” she says. Today is no different than any other day, I can almost hear her look say. Which is true.

Except it’s one day closer to her, my first, leaving for college.

***

My hospital gown is open to the front and an IV already drips saline slowly into my arm. A moment ago, my surgeon walked in, and after a short conversation, asked to see where he would soon be making his incision.

I open the gown and with a Sharpie, he begins drawing lines on my chest and stomach. The cancer inside of me will be cut out, and he’s in charge of making me look put back together.

“Right side,” he says. I nod. On the skin below my right clavicle, he writes Yes, then under that, his initials. He offers me the marker. “I need you to sign it, too.” Awkwardly, using my left hand, I write my initials next to his. S-N-S.

He doesn’t tell me, but from my experience as a nurse, I know that when I will be lying on the table, under anesthesia, when the scalpel is out but there is not yet a cut, the entire operating suite—anesthesiologist, techs, nurses, surgeon—will stop moving.

They call it a pause.

Someone will verify my ID, the procedure, and that the surgery will take place on the correct side. They will match my initials to the site of incision. This intentional moment is a layer of safety. This deep breath, a time to focus. What is so routine to them is life altering for me. This moment of pause, a reminder, a call: be present, pay attention. This is important.

***

Nadia comes into my bedroom wearing an old t-shirt and sweatpants, having just come home from a school event with her friends. It’s 9:23 p.m. and I’m in pajamas, already under the covers. Football plays on TV, and my oldest son walks in and out of the room in between brushing his teeth and checking the score.

“Can I lay with you?” she asks.

“Of course,” I say, pulling down the blankets, making space. She settles in next to me, a woman’s body the same height as my own.

“I sent in the application today,” she says.

“Good,” I reply, pleased. My daughter, the child who made me a mother, is in a season of applying to colleges. And though I cannot bear the thought of her leaving—wasn’t she just in my arms? On my hip? Graduating Pre-K? Finding middle-C on the piano?—I’m also so proud of her. But this specific school she sent her application into today is too far away.

For me.
From me.

So for now, as she lies next to me, I pause to take this in: the two of us in bed, legs touching, our bodies warm and close.

When she is gone, I will need this memory. I will hold it close like a hug, to remind myself that yes, yes, we did have moments like this.

***

For months after I started my new part-time job, I’d get in my car, drive home, and only in my driveway feel a bolt of panic surge through my middle: “Did I clock out?”

I’m usually preoccupied by what comes next: which kid needa to be at which practice, how bad is traffic, what will I make for dinner? There’s always something, something, something else on my mind. The next day at work, I’d have to double check my time, and fill out an exception form if, indeed, I had forgotten. But more often than not, I had clocked out. I just hadn’t remembered.

So one day, when walking down the hall with a coworker, I stopped talking when we came to the timeclock. In silence, I held my badge and deliberately thought: I’m swiping out. It seems so silly, so simple. But what was supposed to be routine became too much of an afterthought. And this one small change allowed me a moment of intention. Of paying attention.

Yesterday, I pulled in my driveway and the same ‘did I clock out’ worry hit me again. But I closed my eyes, took a breath in, and remembered. Yes, there I was, standing and swiping, I could see it in a paused picture in my memory. Exhaling, I let my worry go, no longer needing to carry it.

***

A friend and I sit next to each other on lounge chairs at the pool this past summer. We discuss the upcoming school year, how fast the summer went, their recent vacation. Her oldest is leaving for college a few weeks later and under the shade of the umbrella, I ask, “Is she ready?”

“I think so,” my friend says.

“Are you?” I ask, trying to joke. What mother is ready for her first child to leave home?

My friend turns to me with tears in her eyes. I instantly regret my levity. “You just ask yourself, did I do enough? Prepare her enough?” She wipes her eyes. “Did I hug her enough, kiss her, tell her that I love her?”

I reassure her, you did. You did. I know deep in my bones she did.

But I also understand, even though I am a year away, the depth of her motherly ache. And her words expose a raw nerve: my own fears, my own questions, my own worries about sending my child away. When it’s my daughter’s turn, even after all these years together, will I ever believe I did enough?

***

Before my kids leave school, I stop what I’m doing to look my oldest daughter in the eye. “I love you,” I say. And I will continue to say it over and over, just like I have her whole life.

“I’m proud of you,” I tell my son for no reason at all, besides it’s true.

“You bring me so much joy,” I whisper into a soft ear at bedtime.

“I’m so glad you’re my daughter,” I tell my youngest after a kiss on her forehead.

I give hugs. I kiss cheeks. I ask questions. I listen—all the things a mother does on any given day. But now, with this acute awareness of how fast times goes, I’m purposeful to slow these moments down, just a little.

Not so I can say I’m doing this.

But so later I can remind myself, I did this.

I’m collecting these memories like seashells in a jar. For these pauses, big and small, feel as holy as a prayer.

Sonya Spillmann is a nurse, an essayist, and freelance writer living in the DC area with her husband and four kids. She's incapable of small talk, loves red lipstick, and spends the majority of her afternoons driving children around in her minivan. You can read more through her Substack, Finding Feathers. 

Photo by Jennifer Floyd.