From The Worst Comes Our Best: A Mother's Day Letter To My Daughter

Culley -

Last week I came here and wrote about storm clouds and rainbows.  Finding joy after loss.  As I write this on the eve of Mother's Day, our family is mired in one of life's worst experiences - the waiting game.  Like my dad before her, your grandmother is here, but not.  Her eyes are closed, she is unaware, she has left, yet her heart beats on.  It is a sadness that is palpable, and one I wish was not being revisited upon your dad, you, and your siblings.  But as life moves on, so do the people we love.

This past week, as I have been by her bedside each day, I have thought a lot about worsts.  About trials and struggles and traumas.  And the roads down which they lead us.

I look back on my life before your father.  A life I was sharing with someone else.  It blew apart in spectacular fashion - betrayal, the lifting of a hand, the sound of flesh hitting flesh.  Everything shattered that day.  Every dream, every hope, every plan, all my trust, every ounce of love.  Gone.

Worst.

Like every human being faced with a worst, with circumstances they did not see coming, certainly did not seek out, I railed at the fates.  I second guessed everything.  I autopsied every moment that had come before.  My dreams closed their eyes, and kind of like Grandma, I guess I was here, but not.  I went through the motions, heart beating, lungs breathing, went to work, slept, woke up, lather, rinse, repeat.  And then suddenly, against every odd and every piece of rational thought, there was your Dad.  In a relationship textbook, he would have been found under the word 'rebound' or even 'caution'.  Most definitely 'temporary'.

But he wasn't.  And somehow, day by day, I noticed the sun more, I smiled and felt excited again, and slowly I dared to paste together the shards of those dreams that had lay scattered.  He asked, I said yes.

Best.

And then one of my life's biggest dreams arrived.  Story goes that I was only 5, but motherhood was high on my mind.  When someone wants something that badly at such a young age, it can only be borne of something deep, indefinable, completely organic.  I wanted to be a Mom.  I wanted to nurture.  I always wanted a baby.

I was pregnant.  My life's dream was coming true.  And in my mind I was quickly constructing dreams for our baby, our future as a family.

BEST.  

But the path to a dream is rarely a straight line.

We lost that baby.  And the word 'worst' simply was not big enough.  I was drowning.  In pain.  In sadness.  In grief.  In rage.  Again, I was here, but not here.  Breathing only because it happens, not because I wanted it.  In fact each breath was an affront to what I had lost.  A reminder that I was alive, but that baby was not.

WORST.  WORST. WORST.

Months passed.  Tears dried.  The fires of rage dimmed.  Dreams dared to peek out from where they were hiding.  Until one day, I found hope, life, my smile, my desire to breathe, you - all contained in the tiniest of plus signs on a pregnancy test.

What followed were months of joy tinged with terror.  Excitement dulled by fear.  Every trip to the bathroom filled with adrenaline and worry.  Yet you were not that first baby.  Whatever had gone so terribly wrong, was not happening again.  You were in it to win it.  Everything by the book.

And then you were here.  5:08 am on May 10, 1992, Mother's Day,  was the best moment, the best day of my life.  From enduring so much of the worst, I had found the best.  I had found you.  I had dreamed you into life.  Your sister and brother have only added to the word BEST.

I look at your life.  At your ups and downs.  Your struggles, your pains, your worsts.  

That your life has contained echoes of what I went through - worsts in which you were mistreated, unappreciated, not cherished as you should have been?  As your mother I would walk through fire to protect you, but with age comes wisdom, and while I know that I'm supposed to say I would erase those parts of your life if I could, I can't.

To erase them would alter the path to where you are now.  Without the nightmare of "him" you would have never found the next one, who helped you reclaim yourself.  He may not have been for life, but he was for an important season.  For both of you.  And it led you to Sean.  To the love you both wanted, needed, deserved.

Through it all, I know you waited, wanted, dreamed - like I did - of being a Mom.  It was always there inside you.  COVID came and delayed the plans you two were making, over and over and over.  It delayed your biggest dream.  But as they say, a dream deferred is not a dream denied.

Because suddenly, you took your own test and there was your positive.  Your hope.  Your life.  Your future.

YOUR BEST.

Only your Dad really knows how I held my breath and lived in a constant fear of worsts for so much of your pregnancy.  So fearful that your dream would crumble like mine did before.  I held my breath with every text, every phone call.  But like you, Marlowe was in it to win it.  And the only place she was going was into your arms.

The day she was born and I watched you holding her, I saw what I felt when I first held you.  You were complete.  I see it every time I watch you with her.  

When I look at Marlowe I feel, to the deepest part of my heart, the same thing I do when I look at you and Kendall and Toby.  She is meant to be here.  She is the best that came from your worsts.  You were meant to be her mother.  And she was meant to be your daughter.

Not every day will be sunny, and inevitably there will be worsts that will come.  In the time it has taken to write this, the call came.  Your grandmother has passed away.  Another worst to endure, to process.  But the worsts have value.  Grandma knew that.  They mold us, forge us, teach us, and push us down paths we may never have discovered on our own.  Her worsts of losing George and Grandpa Rudy led her down a path to Florida, to us, to the dream come true of meeting her great granddaughter. 

Thank you for doing that for her, for giving her one last BEST.  And thank you for always being mine.  Happy Mother's Day.  I love you.

Mom

Comments

[Chicky]

dammit…you write so good. it’s 3:53 AM and I’m all teary-eyed and wide awake. I’m gonna think about this today.

My older sister had 20+ miscarriages, 4 in-vitero’s and dreams broken every time. She eventually found out she had Factor Five Leiden, preventing her blood from clotting, and preventing a fetus from attaching. But from that devastating news came the most beautiful children - Madelaina Bernadette and Cristian Gregory. Brother and sister (still best friends in their 20s) from Guatemala.

Chris was able to adopt (after jumping through a lot of hoops). She takes Maddie and Cristian back to Guatemala every year for a week to see their birth-mom…it’s really pretty special.

I know everyone has their stories (not me I live vicariously through ya’ll), to her, and you and everyone else reading this, Happy Mother’s Day!

[Shana]

Oh my gosh is this ever brutiful ❤️💔