In the Shadows

I’m pulled into the image like a magnet and I can almost hear the swishing sound of a nylon rope grazing concrete on an early fall afternoon in Georgia...

In our family, we do birthdays big. They aren’t big with expensive presents, but they are big in the abundance of little things. The youngest of my daughters turned 16 in January, and in preparation for her “birthday week,” I compiled nearly a hundred photos and videos that her sister used to create a 10-minute highlight reel. As a child, my youngest was our entertainment, the star of our show, eager to impress and capture our attention. She was highly successful in this quest. In the video, there are lots of photos of her dancing, running, laughing and being engulfed with hugs. Toward the end, the photos show an older version of this child who is unaware of how strikingly beautiful she is and much less enthusiastic to be in front of the camera. As a 16-year-old, she’s more eager for solitude in her room than she is for the spotlight. When I attempt to take photos of her now, she often shields her face with her hand in defiance of her younger attention-hungry self. Behind the protest, however, is a glimmer of that familiar youthful smile, although it is much more subtle than it used to be. 

This birthday girl is the last daughter living at home. Her oldest sister is married and lives two hours away. Her other sis, the producer of the surprise video, is away at college in Alabama, a near-six-hour drive south. They both had planned to come home for her birthday but winter weather and dangerous roads kept them away. So, we FaceTimed them instead for the big video reveal at our extended family celebration. It wasn’t the same as having everyone here cuddled up on the couch together, but it was the best we could do.

I was a blubbery mess reliving each image, remembering the days when my baby girl was uninhibited, carefree and full of enthusiasm for impressing us with her dance moves, creative talents and athletic skills. Among all the photos in the video is an image of her jumping rope that captures the essence of her “little girlness” and reminds me how fleeting childhood is.

It’s not really a photo of her. It’s a photo of her shadow. The top portion of her body is cropped out. Artistically, it’s been one of my favorite images for a long time, but on her Sweet 16 my breath is stolen, drawn out of my lungs like the carwash vacuum used to suck all the Cheerios and Goldfish crackers off the floorboard of our old van. I’m pulled into the image like a magnet and I can almost hear the swishing sound of a nylon rope grazing concrete on an early spring afternoon in Georgia.

After the party, I revisit the image on my phone and soak in all the details of it, seeking answers to why it affects me so much. At a glance, this shadowy photo could be mistaken for any one of my girls had I not remembered taking it of my youngest and had she not been wearing one of her favorite outfits. I stare at it, willing time to rewind to the day the sun shone behind her on our front sidewalk as she practiced skipping over the rope, barefoot and breathless. In my recollection of this moment, I hear a youthful version of her voice singing, “Watch me, Mommy,” her messy, sun-kissed ponytail swinging like a pendulum on a clock, marking the seconds of her childhood progressing.

I was, in fact, watching her as she requested, and I’m grateful to my younger busy mother self for grabbing my camera to capture her celebratory achievement. I can imagine the look of pride on her face. I can almost see her expression within that shadow, in my mind’s eye at least. Her large, golden-brown eyes are dancing for my attention, and her smile broadens at the acknowledgment of it.

She is wearing one of her favorite shirts, a light turquoise sleeveless top that’s reddish-orange at the bottom like a sunset. It’s both bold and whimsical in a hippie kind of way. Her standard uniform of black leggings clings to her ankles and her sweet little girl knees. There are remnants of pink sidewalk chalk dust and a huge mound of dirt that I know is full of tiny, stinging ants. This photo was taken at our former home in Georgia where enormous ant hills, lizards and tree frogs were part of our daily landscape. Little girls in “Watch me, Mommy” moments were also part of the landscape. In this photo, the youthfulness of her body and the delicate way she holds the rope contrast to the vigorous windmill motion of her arms. Fragility and strength, both complementing the other, translate so much more than the moment might suggest. Together, they are vulnerable, as well as commanding.

There is power in this photo. I’m just now realizing how much power.

This captured moment ruptures something within me. My mind reaches for it in my memory, and the sound of the nylon turning draws me further in, swishing it into view. And, then I see another face. It is my own. It is my little girl self, gripping the sweaty plastic handles of a rope and seeing the world in a rhythmic up and down motion, willing my legs to pump higher, to keep going, to break my record of jumps from the day before. My cheeks are freckled and rosy from all the jumping and my light-brown bangs fan my sticky forehead.

I see myself in her shadow. I am energetic and eager to impress too.

I’m eager to improve, also.

I wonder if that is how I’ve parented her and her sisters. Have I seen too much of myself in their shadows and neglected to see the light that shines around them? How has my own need to do better than the day before impacted their lives? I wonder now what I said to her when the photo was taken. Did I tell her how impressed I was with her jumping? Or did I suggest she could improve if she practiced, jumping a little higher next time? What messages did I send her in this “watch me” moment?

That’s it, I think. That’s why this image stops me in my tracks.

But still, there’s more.

When this image was captured I was parenting three active daughters enrolled in three different schools. I was working full-time, plus freelancing and preparing for another start of a basketball season as a coach’s wife. I know there were some days that I was barely getting by. My inner critic will remind me that it seemed like the laundry was never done and the kitchen sink was never empty of dirty dishes. If I let this voice continue, it will also remind me that I relied on my eldest daughter a little too much to help with her younger sisters and that I never made the perfect Disney vacation happen, or that I failed to complete the scrapbooks…or even give them a fair start. That voice will remind me of the regrets of not being a good enough mother (or wife) to keep everything intact, at least not to the standards I set for myself.

About six months after we moved from this home where the jump rope photo was taken, our life as a family morphed into something I didn’t recognize. Something I couldn’t control. It was out of my hands, like a jump rope that was turning so fast it spiraled into the air. I was thrown to the ground from the momentum of the loss, unable to keep my balance. The rope I had been clinging to was gone, and before I realized it, all that was left was the outline of our former life, darkened and out of reach.

That’s when I realize it’s not just the innocence of childhood that seems lost like Peter Pan’s shadow. It’s what I thought was supposed to be part of her childhood that wasn’t. Not just hers, but all my children’s, even my oldest. I am mourning what I believe they didn’t experience when our family shifted, as much as I am mourning the beauty of what they did.

I’ve been doing this for nearly three-and-a-half years, hustling to make up for the loss. Trying to do better than I did the day before.

It is this photo that convinces me, however, that all the hustling to make up might be stealing away the unexpected moments of beauty and art that can happen now when I’m not paying attention. For some reason, I picked up my camera that sunny afternoon. Nearly a decade later, I’m drawn to understanding the image I captured on a day that was so normal. And it’s beginning to come into focus …

Where there are shadows, there is also light.

I can look at this picture and only see the shadow of intangible childhood memories, or the absence of ones I felt they were robbed of.

But if I look closely, I can also see the light shining around them, illuminating the beauty of the fleeting moments we have yet to experience.

Perhaps there is relief in this shadow, like the shade under a tall pine tree on a hot, humid day.

Perhaps my older mother self is in a “watch me” moment within this shadow of my younger daughter. “Watch me,” I am whispering to her. “Watch me, too.” My eyes, brown like hers, seek that acknowledgment as well. I hope someday she might recall a moment or two of our life right now and remember how her mother shifted her perspective of what our family lost and began focusing on what was gained by standing in the light and letting it illuminate us, like the sun on our faces at the start of spring. Parenting experience thus far reveals that acknowledgment might be unattainable right now. That’s okay. Feeling ignored is a stage of parenting too, and it won’t last forever. I’ve learned this with her older sisters. There will be unexpected wins, and the losses won’t cut so deep.

The day before I took the birthday girl to get her driver’s permit, I spent the night with my oldest who is pregnant with my first grandchild. We stood in the nursery of her beautiful farmhouse where she has organized the same outfits that she and her sisters wore as babies. I volunteered at the school where she teaches kindergarten. It’s the same school where she attended first and second grade. As I observed her commanding this classroom, I remembered her lining up all her stuffed animals, “teaching” them in her childhood playroom. It is surreal to imagine she isn’t pretend teaching and that she has a baby of her own in her belly. I imagine my granddaughter skipping a rope of her own someday, the light surrounding her. I don’t know what she looks like yet, but I picture the shadow of a messy ponytail and sweet little girl knees, bending with momentum and strength.

On the way home from my sleepover, I dropped a care package in the mail to my middle daughter whom I’ve spoken with every single day this week on the phone. Sometimes she called just to kill time, but a few of those conversations were spurred because she needed advice. She’s been sick a lot this semester and I’ve sent supplements and vitamins and suggested all the home remedies that worked when she was a child. Still, I’m tempted to drive six hours south just to put my wrist on her forehead to see if she has a fever.   

Each one of these girls is still the star of my motherhood show. This childhood thing isn’t over because two of them are gone and one is counting down the days until she’s a few hours away too. They will always need me. It just might look different. And I will always need them. There’s still a lot I can learn from being their mother. I am still learning and growing alongside them. I am still in training.

I imagine each of their shadows, delicate and bold in the forward motion of growth, a halo of light illuminating them. I think of my youngest right now in this current moment, knowing the pendulum of time is swinging like her ponytail still does when she’s on the soccer field. I am watching her, even when she prefers that I glance away. I am preparing her for the days when the rope feels heavy and out of control. Sometimes that seems like a struggle, and we’re both pulling on opposite ends. I am ready, however, to capture more moments, and I’m hoping we can take turns jumping through this life side-by-side, double Dutch-style, for another couple of years at least.