II Most Wanted

LONG EXPOSURE

Song note: II MOST WANTED by Beyoncé and Miley Cyrus quietly inspired this piece, and if you press play and let yourself sit with the story too, I think you might find something of your own in it. 😉

Motherhood is wild because one minute you are bragging that your daughter could run the world, and the next minute you are standing at somebody else’s graduation smiling politely while internally hosting a panel discussion called What Exactly Are We Doing Here?

Picture it.

June 8, 2019.

Twenty years after my own graduation.

Standing room only.

Biggest high school in Washington state.

Apparently arriving twenty minutes early to graduation means you are somehow already late, which feels like an aggressive system.

So there I was, leaning against concrete because every seat was gone and, honestly, if you know me, finding a wall to lean against did not offend me. It had shade. It let me hide from the evil sun. Frankly, I prefer a good leaning situation to forced social eye contact anyway.

The emotional part was harder.

No husband.

No family buffer.

Just me, my very pregnant daughter, and her boyfriend’s family.

And listen, they were lovely. Kind. Proud. Taking pictures and celebrating exactly how families should at graduation while I stood there smiling politely and quietly realizing something devastating:

I was standing inside somebody else’s milestone.

The problem was not them.

The problem was that tomorrow, across the river, was supposed to be hers.

That is the part that still catches in my throat.

Tomorrow. Across the river. Different high school. Different ending.

Class of 2019. That was the plan.

A diploma. And the plan was an AA with College credits through running start. Big dreams. Smart girl things. The version of motherhood where you post the proud graduation pictures and pretend your child becoming an adult is not actively attacking your emotional stability.

Instead, my daughter was ten days from giving birth. And I was there watching her boyfriend graduate. Now before the internet grabs pitchforks, let me explain something about motherhood. Motherhood is deeply inconvenient because multiple truths can exist at the same time.

I loved him. I rooted for him. I hoped for him. And also? I was angry. Like… quietly rage-clapping in the bleachers angry. Because I knew things.

I knew how hard she had worked to help him get there. Papers written. Support given. Encouragement poured out. Emotional labor before she even had language for emotional labor. (All while preparing to go into actual labor!) My daughter, who had always been bright enough to light rooms on fire intellectually, had spent years helping carry someone else while her own future got blurrier and blurrier.

I was trying to celebrate a boy I hoped would rise while quietly mourning the girl I worried had to shrink. That sentence still hurts.

Sweet girl, if I could sit beside the version of you from that day, the one ten days from motherhood and trying very hard to impress his family and pretend everything was okay, I think I would say things differently.

Back then, fear makes moms loud. Fear disguises itself as opinions. As control. As urgency. As “helpful suggestions.” As panic in a cardigan.

But now? Now I think I would sit beside you and simply ask: Are you okay? Like… really okay? Because the truth is, you were carrying more than a baby. You were carrying expectations.

Loyalty.

Love.

Hope.

Fear.

…And the unbearable pressure of growing up too quickly.

You were excited, which somehow made the whole thing harder and sweeter at the same time. Ten days from labor and running around the block trying to go into it, because being subtle skipped our bloodline entirely.

Sweetheart, this is the part I need to say carefully because I never want my grief to sound like disappointment in you.

I was never disappointed in you. I was grieving for you. There is a difference.

Because what I could not yet articulate standing against that stadium wall was that I was not grieving a diploma. Not really. I was grieving the wandering years.

The freedom.

The unknown.

The selfish beautiful mess of being seventeen, eighteen, nineteen and figuring out who you are before the world starts asking things from you.

I grieved late-night drives and dorm-room mistakes and Harvard (you could have made it babe) and changing majors three times because adulthood sounds fake and confusing. I grieved the version of life where you got to stumble loudly into yourself without a constant filter over every decision.

Motherhood.

That word changes the lighting on everything. I hated that you did not get more time. Not because motherhood ruined you. Not because motherhood diminished you.

But because motherhood arrived before you ever really got to meet yourself without responsibility sitting beside you.

Part of me blamed him.

I hoped character would catch up.

I hoped effort would match loyalty. (But then again I hoped loyalty would show up and that was a joke too.)

I hoped kindness would grow roots.

For too long I confused potential with proof.

So did you. And I get it.

Hope is loud when you love somebody.

Hope makes women stay longer than they should.

Hope makes mothers believe things might still turn.

Hope makes you sit in stadiums trying to celebrate while quietly wondering if everybody else somehow missed the fire.

And there I was.

Twenty years after my own graduation.

Leaning against a wall.

Smiling politely.

Trying very hard not to become emotionally unwell during somebody else’s ceremony.

Trying to celebrate. Trying not to mourn. Trying not to ask the question that sat in my throat the whole night: What if this beautiful brilliant girl never gets to become all she could be?

Ten days later, you pushed him into the world.

Let me just say this because motherhood deserves more honesty and less Pinterest.

Birth is absolutely feral. Beautiful, sacred, life changing, sure. But also feral.

Nobody tells you there is a moment where you look at your child and think, Oh wow… she is doing something impossibly brave and I would also like everyone to stop talking to me forever because my nervous system is hanging on by decorative string.

But there you were. Focused. Fierce. Braver than I felt. And somewhere between the fear, the exhaustion, the adrenaline, and the very rude reality of hospital lighting, something shifted in me.

You were becoming.

Not ruined.

Not behind.

Not broken.

Becoming.

It just did not look like the version I had imagined while mentally planning graduation announcements and pretending I had emotional range. And, sweet girl, I wish I could go back and tell the version of me leaning against that stadium wall:

Relax your grip.

This story is not over. Because the truth I could not see then was this:

The diploma was never the whole story. The plan was never the whole story.

You were.

Motherhood… inconveniently, beautifully, annoyingly, turned out to be one of the sharpest parts of your becoming.

Which is hard for a mother to admit when she spent years grieving what she thought was being lost.

Because here is what I know now:

You are fierce.

You always were.

You are smart in ways school never measured well. Thoughtful in ways the world desperately needs. Funny, emotionally engaged, deeply empathetic, wildly loyal, maddeningly hopeful. You are the person people call when life falls apart because somehow you know how to sit in hard things without looking away.

You are my oldest.

My rock.

My silly best friend.

My helper.

And watching you mother?

Oh my goodness!!!

That part got me.

I learned there is something humbling about watching your kid become extraordinary in a way you did not predict.

I thought success would look like diplomas and timelines and plans. Turns out sometimes success looks like singing karaoke in the car with your little boy while teaching him he is safe to be loud. It looks like kneeling down to talk instead of yelling up. It looks like helping him regulate instead of controlling him.

It looks like tenderness.

Patience.

Connection.

It looks like saying, “Tell me what happened,” instead of, “What is wrong with you?”

Somewhere along the way I realized something devastating:

You became the kind of mother I wish more people had.

That little boy? The one who arrived ten days after graduation season somehow showed up and gently interrupted the grief. Not erased it. Not fixed it. Just… reminded me life was still becoming something.

Creative. Funny. Sensitive. Completely feral in the way tiny boys somehow are. Equal parts tenderness and chaos. A child who dresses like Link from Zelda because apparently mythology and emotional support swords are a personality now. A boy who loves jumping spiders with the tenderness of a tiny wildlife documentarian and asks for sleepovers in grandma’s bed like he invented joy.

He is soft heart and wild energy.

Fresh life.

Fresh love.

The kind of child who walks into a room and reminds everyone they are still alive.

There are days I sit beside him during movie nights and think:

Oh.

This.

This is what I could not see.

Not because the hard parts disappeared.

They did not. Let me be clear about that. The relationship got harder. For you and for us watching you navigate it. I kept hoping character would catch up. I kept hoping love would become enough. It did not. There were too many chances. Too much grace handed out in buckets to somebody who kept showing us exactly who they were. And I hate that.

For you.

For younger-you.

For the version of you who deserved softness and steadiness and partnership and got lessons instead. But even that truth does not erase this one: You did not disappear inside motherhood. You expanded.

That is the part I missed. I worried you had to shrink. You became larger. Stronger. Clearer. Funnier. More grounded. More yourself. Even when you were hidden in yourself at times…

And this is where the photography metaphor finally gets annoying enough to be true.

Long exposure teaches you patience.

At first, the image looks blurry. Messy. Wrong, even. Background noise everywhere. Motion where you wanted stillness. Light landing in strange places.

You think the picture failed. You think the shot is ruined. But then time develops it. And suddenly what looked chaotic becomes layered. Meaningful. Alive.

Back then, standing against that stadium wall, I thought I was grieving the picture. Turns out I was panicking over the background.

Because what developed…What slowly came into focus…

Was worth infinitely more than the image I thought I had lost.

That is motherhood.

And in many ways, motherhood is finally accepting you were never the driver. You are the shotgun rider.

You sit beside the people you love while life takes corners too fast. You grip the metaphorical dashboard. You say things like, “Babe… maybe absolutely do not text him back,” while also packing snacks because unfortunately love is unconditional.

You hope.

You panic.

You apologize when fear makes you loud.

You laugh.

You cry.

You sit through graduations that hurt.

You hold babies at midnight.

You learn when to speak and when to let life say the thing louder.

You ride.

There is a line in II MOST WANTED about being young and jumping the gun because one day you will not be.

That line wrecks me.

Because darling daughter, you were young.

So young.

And life moved fast. Faster than either of us were ready for.

But what I know now is this:

I would ride shotgun with you all over again.

Even through the scary roads. Even through the grief. Even through the detours.

Because what developed here?

This woman.

This mother.

This life.

This little boy in a Zelda costume asking for popcorn and movie night in Yaya’s bed.

This fierce, funny, emotionally brave version of you.

Worth more than the picture I thought I was losing.

Sometimes the image develops differently than we planned.

Sometimes the life we panic over quietly becomes the one that teaches us what mattered all along.

Turns out I was so busy grieving the picture I thought I lost that I almost missed what was developing right in front of me.

And sweetheart?

This version of you?

I would ride shotgun for her every time.

Why II MOST WANTED feels like motherhood to me. The idea of riding beside someone you love while life moves faster than you expected. The ache of being young, jumping the gun, becoming before you feel ready, and realizing love sometimes looks like staying in the passenger seat while someone else learns to drive.