Sparkly Green Earrings

by Melanie Shankle

  When Caroline got home from school that day, I announced she was now responsible for picking out her own clothes the night before. If she forgot to do it, then she had to wear whatever I picked out, with no argument or debate about the unfairness of life and the lifelong wounds you’ll suffer if your mom makes you wear a sweater dress.

  A sweater dress that you begged for only two months earlier. A sweater dress that was not, in fact, woven on the devil’s loom.

  As it turned out, our new system wasn’t much less painful than the old system. It just took place at 6:30 p.m. instead of 7:30 a.m., and I had the comfort of knowing I could send her to bed shortly after we debated the merits of a plaid skirt versus a tie-dyed dress.

  Which brings us to the other night. The weather forecast indicated it was going to be the coldest day of the year so far. I reminded Caroline to pick out what she wanted to wear the next day. She asked me to help her, so I obliged. I’m really not a heartless tyrant, despite my penchant for sweater dresses and clothes that match.

  As we stood in her closet, she asked, “What would you wear if the weather was going to be cold and you wanted to be toasty warm?”

  I pointed out a few sweater dresses and some fleece-lined tops with leggings or jeans.

  She asked, “What else besides any of those things?”

  Seriously. Netanyahu needs to call me. We can figure out this Middle East thing yet.

  I said, “You find something. I need to go finish cooking dinner.”

  About three minutes later I heard her sneak into the kitchen. She threw a folded-up piece of paper at me and loudly whispered, “Open it.”

  I opened it.

  It read, “I need help.”

  Don’t we all, sister. Don’t we all.

  So, because I am a glutton for punishment, I walked back into her room to give it another try. I showed her a few more outfits that she found unacceptable until I finally channeled my inner fashionista and asked, “What’s your goal? What are you envisioning?”

  “Well. I definitely want to wear my leg warmers. And two shirts. And a skirt. Maybe with some tights. And a hat.”

  Done.

  And that is how I sent my child to school in an outfit that Punky Brewster would have envied.

  The sad thing is that Caroline is only eight. When I think of how many years of this we have ahead of us, it makes me want to shell out money for a private school that requires uniforms. And we haven’t even reached the age where she’s conscious of name brands. I’m sure those years will be a treasure.

  If memory serves, and sometimes it does, I think I was in fifth grade when it became of utmost importance for me to have Jordache jeans and Izod shirts and Nike tennis shoes. And I vividly remember in eighth grade standing in the junior department at Foley’s and begging my daddy to buy me a pair of Guess overalls. Overalls that cost eighty dollars. In 1984. That’s like a seven-hundred-dollar pair of pants in today’s economy.

  But I strongly believed those Guess overalls might change my life. They were the key to popularity and a seat at the cool lunch table. Because who could resist an awkward thirteen-year-old girl, with bangs teased beyond all reason and gravity, dressed like a farmer?

  Then the other day I was getting dressed for church and realized I’d just changed into four different tops in the course of five minutes. It was with a little shock and shame that I realized Caroline comes by it naturally. Yes, it’s offset by the fact that she has a father who dresses in a rotation of four Columbia fishing shirts and three pairs of khaki pants from Old Navy, but since she carries 50 percent of my DNA, I suspect she’ll always have a strong propensity to be slightly obsessed with what she wears. (I once wore a leopard-print top to the zoo. When I was twenty years old. At five, that’s cute. At twenty it’s called overthinking your wardrobe.)

  It was just two mornings ago when Caroline announced that all she wanted to wear to school from now on were running shorts, leggings, and a T-shirt. I thought of all the beautiful clothes hanging in her closet—clothes she had begged me to buy—and I was furious. I threatened, “Well, I guess I’ll just take all those clothes in your closet and sell them.”

  (Who was I going to sell them to? I’ve never really figured that out, but this threat has worked in the past, so I continue to use it.)

  (I also feel certain there will come a day when Caroline will laugh with her friends about how her crazy mother used to threaten to sell all her clothes.)

  But this time she called my bluff. “Okay,” she said.

  I almost couldn’t see straight. It kind of ruined my whole morning.

  I know. That’s embarrassing.

  Because what I’m finally realizing is that in spite of all my grand declarations, it’s still important to me that Caroline look cute. Sure, I’ve surrendered in certain areas and I gave up on the bows years ago, but I worry about what other people will think when they see my child dressed like a member of the cast of Annie day after day.

  It’s my pride that wants other mothers to see Caroline walk into school and say, “Well, there goes that darling Caroline, dressed like a perfect little lady and with those darling French braids in her hair.” And it’s my pride that is wounded on the days I watch her walk into school and feel certain other mothers are thinking I must be out of town, because why else would my daughter’s hair look like it’s in the late stages of becoming dreadlocks?

  But you know what? It’s not about me.

  There are battles along the way that are worth the fight. Like the ones that involve her safety, morality, spirituality, and general well-being. I will die on those mountains. I will fight with a vengeance, and I will nail shut bedroom windows and take away privileges and be the meanest mom in the world if that’s what the situation calls for.

  But clothes? Ruining every morning with a battle over what she’s going to wear? In the scheme of life, it doesn’t really matter. Yes, the outfit has to be appropriate and fit my parameters for no hoochies in my house, but if Caroline wants to look like she just worked out at the health club every day this year, then it’s not worth the fight.

  And, honestly, if you want to see some poor sartorial choices, go visit your local elementary school. The kids all look homeless. They all look like their mothers have been on extended vacations and left them at home with nothing but their color-blind fathers who don’t understand hairbrush mechanics.

  I have promised myself I will remember the words God spoke to Samuel before he anointed David as king of Israel: “The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).

  Maybe it’s because eight years have come and gone faster than I ever could have imagined, but I’ve painfully started to realize that we have a pretty limited number of years to pour into our children everything we want them to know. I don’t want to spend those years battling over a stupid sweater dress or braided hair, or debating whether those shorts match that shirt just because they are both pink.

  I want to spend these limited years with a focus on shaping Caroline’s heart, not her closet. I would say I want her to be a better version of myself, but that’s not accurate. I want her to be the best version of who God has created her to be—to embrace her individual qualities and gifts. I want to teach her to put on kindness, love, gentleness, patience, and joy every morning and to walk through her day looking for ways to make a difference in her world. To be kind to the little girl in her class who struggles to fit in, to sit next to the new kid who doesn’t know anyone, to stand up for the boy who gets picked on at recess. I want her to know that it’s who she is inside that makes her unique and that there is no clothing available at any store that can add one ounce to her infinite worth.

  Not even a pair of Guess overalls.

  It’s a lesson her mother still struggles with all these years later.

  And even now there are days I hear myself forced to say, “You can’t sleep in a Santa hat while your hair is we
t and expect that it will look good the next day.”

  But let’s be honest: that’s just a life lesson every girl needs to learn.

  Chapter 27

  Little Steps of Letting Go

  The other night I crawled into bed next to Caroline, and she reached out to hold my hand. As I held her warm little hand, still dimpled with the last of her baby fat, it seemed so small. Which is weird because everything about her seems so big to me lately. There have been times I’ve seen her from behind and almost not recognized her because there’s no way that tall, gangly girl is my little baby.

  But as I held her hand and watched her sleep, with her long eyelashes resting on her flawless, olive-skinned cheeks, all the petty arguments and frustrations of the day were forgotten. All the battles faded away in the fresh remembrance that she is the most perfect gift I’ve ever been given. That God chose to entrust this precocious, hilarious, rough-and-tumble girl into my care is almost too much for me to bear.

  I feel like there are so many clichés about motherhood. It’s hard not to repeat what has already been said in various ways from the moment time began. And as I think about all the declarations that have been made about mother love, I realize it’s because motherhood is the thing in a woman’s life that catches her by total and complete surprise.

  Most of us grow up with fairy tales and Barbie dolls and dreams of the day we’ll meet the man we want to spend the rest of our life with. I remember watching the great romances play out before me on the movie screen—Cinderella and Prince Charming, Sandy and Danny Zuko, Bud and Sissy (because what says true love like personalized license plates in the back window of a Ford truck?)—and I hoped and prayed a day would come when I would meet a man I wanted to be with forever.

  We are raised to believe we’ll find our prince. Our own happily ever after. And if anything, the books and movies make it look so much easier than it really is sometimes. There are days marriage feels like throwing a wet cat and a rabid dog who leaves the toilet seat up all the time in a house together and telling them to make it work.

  But then there’s motherhood.

  Even if we’ve dreamed of having babies of our own, there is nothing that prepares us for the way that moment cracks open our hearts and pours in the type of pure love we never knew existed. A love that isn’t about us but is just about wanting to love and protect this little, helpless person who will emit all manner of bodily fluids on us if given half the chance. You can’t fathom it until you experience it. You can decorate a nursery, scribble down baby names, and feel the miracle of a foot kicking your bladder, but none of that comes close to capturing the true moments that make a mama.

  That’s why I believe motherhood gives us the first true glimpse of how God loves us. The kind of love that’s irrevocable, unrelenting, unconditional. I think it’s the closest humans get to living out 1 Corinthians 13. Motherhood is a Holy Communion with Goldfish crackers and juice boxes.

  Yet it’s bittersweet. Because while we choose the person we marry with the belief and hope that it will be “till death do us part,” we become mothers and immediately realize our job is to raise these little people and pour into them and pack in eighteen years of wisdom, love, and protection, only to let them go out into a world that seems scary and way too big for our comfort.

  And that’s where the problem lies.

  We have to let them go. And from what I’ve seen of Caroline’s childhood so far, there are little steps of letting go all along the way. Dropping her off at preschool, surrendering her to kindergarten, letting her spend the night with a friend, sending her to summer camp. The stakes get higher and higher as we send our kids out further and further.

  Those walks down various school hallways are only the beginning of steps that will take them toward their own destiny. Those moments are the motherhood equivalent of riding a bike without training wheels. You just hop on and pray it all works out and the bumps and bruises are kept to a minimum. Sometimes you fall and it’s a big mess, but you get right back on and continue the ride.

  The irony is that the hallmark of how well we’re doing our job is determined by how our children adapt to all these changes. Have we given them the security they need to function with their peers? Do they feel loved enough to pour themselves into the lives around them? Are they secure enough to jump into life with both feet and choose the daring adventure that awaits them?

  And can we watch them fall and make mistakes and wrong decisions while trusting that this is all part of becoming the person God created them to be?

  When Caroline was about two years old, we took a trip to the beach. At some point Perry found a little crab that had lost its claws and put it in a bucket for her. She picked up that crab and carried it around like it was her baby the rest of the day. That poor crab didn’t have a chance. He got loved to death from all the attention and constant handling.

  I watched her with the crab as she ignored all my admonitions that the poor crab just needed to be set free if he was to have any chance of surviving. And God showed up there on that beach to teach me a lesson. Nothing survives when it’s being smothered. Life, real life, requires being free to move about in the great big ocean, not being cradled in little hot hands that will stifle independence and creativity. We can’t keep our crabs (or our kids) in a bucket and expect them to go far in life.

  The problem is that our hearts are so intertwined with our little crabs’ hearts that we don’t know where theirs begin and ours end. And it’s so hard to let go.

  The year Caroline turned four, I was driving her to school when she announced she didn’t want me to park and walk her in to school as I’d done for the last two years. Her exact words were, “Mama, drop me off by Mrs. Jane.”

  “Are you sure? You don’t want me to walk you in?”

  “Mama, I need to tell you something. You know, I’m a big girl now.”

  Yes. I know.

  I drove through the carpool line and watched her get out of the car with her tote bag in one hand and her lunch box in the other. She walked with an extra bounce in her ponytail that made me smile as I noted the pride she felt with her new step of independence.

  And then I started to cry.

  You would have thought I was dropping her off at her dorm room knowing I wouldn’t hear from her until she was out of money or clean clothes. Or both. I wiped my tears, told myself I was being dramatic, even for me, and wrote the whole thing off to some kind of estrogen surge.

  The following Wednesday, the day before her fifth birthday, I asked her if she wanted me to walk her in or drop her off again.

  Without a moment’s hesitation she said, “Drop me off!”

  So I did.

  And I cried again.

  I’d like to think it was due to PMS, but since I made it through the day without eating my body weight in M&M’S, I don’t think that was the problem.

  I have never been a mother who mourned all the passing signs of babyhood. Sure, I’d love to have one more day with Caroline as a newborn or a toddler, but for me, motherhood has just gotten better as I’ve survived breastfeeding, weaned her off the pacifier, completed our potty-training marathon, and watched the terrible threes turn into the charming fours.

  But something about watching her walk into school by herself made me think of all the ways I’ll have to let her go over a lifetime. The truth is, I don’t want to let her go, yet I’m so proud every time I see she is self-confident enough to take these steps away from me.

  I’ve also realized that when the day comes to drop her off at college, I might need a surplus of Kleenex and Valium. And perhaps a choir to assist me in singing “I Hope You Dance.”

  (Even though I’d never actually sing “I Hope You Dance.” It’s too much of a cliché. I’m much more likely to sing Carly Simon’s “Love of My Life” or just sob silently as I drive back home while eating a chocolate donut.)

  That night as I tucked Caroline into bed, I gave her a kiss and said, “Just think, that’s Mama’s la
st four-year-old kiss!”

  She put her little hands on each side of my face, pulled me back down to her, kissed me softly on the cheek, and said, “That’s a four-year-old kiss that you can keep forever, Mama.”

  And I will. I’ll keep it forever.

  Because raising a child is a fleeting moment in time that sometimes gets swallowed up in the daily routine of car pools and soccer practice and Can I get away with serving tacos for dinner again tonight? And yet it’s quite possibly the most important thing we’ll ever do. It’s the daily balance of treasuring the moments even as we wish some of them away. It’s treading water in a sea of imperfections. It’s a delicate dance of guilt and joy.

  At times I’ve thought how nice it would be if I could just protect my daughter forever—shield her from hurt feelings, a broken heart, dreams that may not come true. But I realize all those things in my own life have been part of making me who I am today. Had I been protected from all the unpleasant moments life can bring, I wouldn’t have learned who I really am. Caroline’s character will have to be built and shaped by the joys and heartaches she will face over her lifetime.

  I have to say it’s a little frightening. And a lot gut wrenching.

  For Caroline’s eighth birthday she decided she wanted to get her ears pierced. We went to the mall, even though I had no idea if she’d actually go through with it or not. My doubts only grew stronger when she asked if we could just look at clothes for a while instead. But eventually we made our way to Claire’s, and she looked at the various starter earring options and weighed the decision as carefully as I’ve ever seen her think about anything. Then she spotted a pair of sparkly green earrings that seemed to erase all her doubts.

  Ultimately the desire for those earrings outweighed her fears. I told the salesgirl we were ready to proceed with the piercing. And so she began to mark Caroline’s ears.