Paradox

My eyes blurred with tears as I dusted the cobwebs from the empty totes I had dragged up from the basement. My arms ached from the digging I’d had to do to free them, pulling them out from under decades of memorabilia—like the brass-plated shoes my children had worn to first walk in, and the containers of military medals my once-young husband had earned, before his heart and lungs started protesting the chain-smoking he refused to quit.

But worse than my sore arms was the pounding in my chest as I carefully stacked my daughter’s clean, folded laundry into the first tote, snapping the lid into place. I moved on to organizing and sorting through the odds and ends we’d bought at the store, consulting a list that had come up when we searched for “what do I need to take with me to college?” on the Internet. My heart had been pounding then, too, louder and faster with every throw pillow, first aid kit, and box fan that we put into the cart.

The relentless pounding cued up a montage, reeling out before my eyes, of her flip flops slapping the sidewalk as she yelled “Mama, look!” and pointed at a new wonder. It seemed like she had always run ahead of me, like even with my longer legs and the 30 extra years of wisdom I held over her head, I had been following her lead ever since she first came out, pink and screaming.

Oh, the screaming. Even then, she knew she could seize the world by her hands if she just asserted herself loudly enough. Even if it was enough to drive her dad away from the hospital—he could handle IED explosions, but not a newborn wailing.

I dreaded each box we loaded into the car, while she deposited each tote into the trunk with a skip in her step.

Hundreds of miles into the drive, she gasped and pointed out the window. “Waffle House!” she cheered. “We don’t have one! Mom, let’s try it!”

And I tried to memorize the mess of syrup she loaded onto her plate and the hair she tucked behind her ear and the way she grinned like her smile could win a contest—even as the pounding increased several decibels, inching up to make a roaring sound in my ears.

The whole weekend slipped by like snapshots in a photo album. Unlocking her dorm room for the first time. Cleaning the bathroom. Greeting her roommates. All those painstakingly packed totes emptying, one at a time.

All the pain I’d been through in my life—marching my sisters to the police department with my ten-year-old chin lifted high to turn in our stepfather; fleeing a sleepover at a friend’s house after I woke up to her dad’s boozy breath on my face; staring down the barrel of the gun my father had pointed at me as a child, calculating quickly how many escape routes I could take while bringing my two little sisters with me.

Lying about my age and working to keep the electricity on in our house so that we wouldn’t freeze to death in the Midwestern winters, while my mom was off who knew where with strange men for however long she wanted.

Being told by a judge that I was too pretty and needed to be knocked down a peg, so that I wouldn’t expect everything handed to me in life—while my assailant walked free with a smirk on his face.

Years of scrubbing fast food bathrooms until my knuckles split and bled—always working the hardest and the fastest, always forcing numbers that simply wouldn’t add up to make some kind of sense on the budget.

Dragging two children more than two miles from home in a wagon, then loading it with groceries and dragging the heavier load back home—because my husband had taken our only car on a military trip.

All the times I had cried wondering how I was going to pay our mortgage, making sure to contain my meltdowns in the bathroom. All so she could twirl in her princess tutus and sparkly ballet slippers in the living room, unburdened.

All the times her eyes searched for me in the audience before she lit up a stage. Before she held her breath and jumped into the deep end of the pool. Before she ripped open her college acceptance letters.

All the times I was relieved when she reached for my hand. All the times I controlled my disappointment when she didn’t need to anymore.

Thousands of dinners where I scrimped by and said I wasn’t hungry to put the money away, to pay for her to have access to the education I never could have afforded in my wildest dreams.

And now here we were. She was unpacked. Her teeth were practically sparkling as she flashed her dimples at her new friends—she always attracted so many, like a people magnet.

Here was my daughter. I had fought every battle, taken on every scar so she could arrive at adulthood unblemished. We had made it. So, how was I supposed to tell her that the pain of leaving her here was finally the pain that I thought could kill me? I couldn’t. I could barely speak as I crushed her into a hug.

She hugged me back so hard that I thought she understood as I choked out that I loved her.

I gestured around her room. “Not too late to pack this all up and go home,” I said.

She laughed. “I love you, Mom. Drive home safe.”

I nodded. “I love you, too.” The moment was monumental. What could I ever say? The car keys shook in my hands. “Well—bye.”

Nothing had ever been more impossible. But somehow, I got in the car. I turned the keys in the ignition. The engine roared and turned over.

And I left her there. Even though I had to pull over on the side of the road halfway home to have a panic attack. But through the pounding in my chest, one refrain kept me going: I did it. I did it. I did it.

I had survived it all so that she could thrive.

Now, she would thrive. And achieving that would have to be enough.