Eighteen years isn’t enough.
Because she won’t remember. She won’t remember the first one when I rocked her through every night and ached from the tired and how much my heart wanted to eat her whole. She won’t feel the knitted blanket I wrapped around her and the giraffe lovie I tucked under her left ear every night.
Eighteen years isn’t enough because she won’t remember the crawling and the climbing up on furniture and the gummy grins that are burned into our minds. She won’t know how her brothers fought to wrap arms around her and whistled at her from the next-door room, calling her as a puppy, like only big brothers can.
Eighteen years isn’t enough because she won’t remember one or two or three. She won’t know that she ate a whole can of black olives when all she had was the corner of one tooth. She won’t know that black beans were her favorite there for a short while.
Three and four and five and six will blink by for her even though I will feel them with every fiber of my memory.
She won’t.
Eighteen years isn’t enough because I won’t start to have outlines to her until she’s eight, nine, ten and even then she won’t know what my inside looks like because she’s still too young to care.
Eighteen is a lifetime for me and a smudge for her. Blurry moments of being mothered, being told no, feeling herself stretch against and away from me.
She will have hardly drawn the breath of living memory by eighteen.
I will have lived a hundred lifetimes of love for her by then.
Eighteen is too short to know a mother.
Eighteen is the deep well of knowing a daughter.
And forty two? Oh mom, I’m so sorry I was robbed of knowing the inside of you. Your Jo-ness. Your world of words and wants and dreams that weren’t all about providing for me.
But I am thirty seven and Zoe is only nine months and already I have more of her saved up than could be recorded in any library.
So I know now what I didn’t know then – we weren’t strangers. The memory lapses are one sided – you always knew me. Like I know the dimple in Zoe’s right cheek. And how she breathes out loudly through her nose when she’s processing a strong emotion. Or how she likes to pinch my neck as she falls asleep tucked into my chest.
Mothering Zoe I have unwittingly stepped into the shoes of Jo and find there memories with deep, rich roots.
My daughter – she is growing me up into a mom and your daughter who remembers all eighteen years, starting at one.
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{ 35 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh Sweetie you never cease to strike straight at the heart.
- And being the mom of two young-adult daughters I can say you got this just right. I love the contrasting of time-perspective. One of my heart-hurts as a mom was that realization of how few details they retain…but how wonderful the firm grasp of that end-result collection of love we pour into them over those 18 years
Thanks, as always, for sharing your heart…
Oh, Lisa-Jo. You’ve undone me tonight. I won’t ever forget this. Never.
Thank you.
Oh how beautiful. Your words never cease to move me, sweetie.
I realized that I felt like a mother – truly – when I was able to embrace my mother an accepted her for who she is. I am 46yrs old and I have a better relationship with her now, than before when I tried to go my own way leaving her behind. I, a mother three times, have learned that she taught me so much even when I wasn’t willing.
m.
oh, this tears me up. For your loss, but my own too. My mother is still right along side me, but I’ve been missing this chance to see her as a full woman outside of me. I have glimpses of woman that I learn when I am up with my daughter at 3 am, and feel strongly as you do me loving her fully all her years while she will know me so few. Thank you for reminding me to look for the woman, in full.
Lisa-Jo, this post has reached down into the depths of my heart. You are so right, and I never thought of it this way before. Our daughters will barely have gotten to know who we really are, they are so busy discovering who they are. But we do know them so well, don’t we? That span of time between birth and letting go, so full. She will be stretching for her independence and I will be fighting to help her retain her innocence. What a strange balance and what a beautiful picture of our relationship with our Lord and Savior, who knows us so well, but who we will not know fully in this lifetime.
Now where are the tissues?
what a wonderful and thought provoking post! It is so true, and really makes you think.. about how precious motherhood is!
Lisa-Jo,
This is a beautiful post. I love how you caught essence of being a mother – in those simple memories, the everyday moments that burn forever in our minds. The older I get the more I can relate to my grandmother when she’d get that look of remembering on her face, as she’d watch us kids, and as she’d tell her tales of when she was a young mom.
I want to remember.
Blessings, friend.
Rachel
Beautiful. Just beautiful. It’s funny; I was just talking to my husband about this the other day; how, as a baby, I lived in my mother’s world. I didn’t know me. I didn’t know her. But now that I have a daughter, I can see who I was as a baby and who my mother was as a younger mother. It’s such a beautiful circle that connects us, whether we are together or apart.
This is beautiful! My birthday is tomorrow and I’m sure my Mom is filled with similar reflections. I’m going to pass this on to her.
You have captured that surprise, that wonder of being a mom, of the realization of the things your mom loved, and did and didn’t do for you. I remember my parents telling me with love that no matter how deliberate our decision was to become parents that we would never really be ready. They were so very right. It is so much more than we ever imagine, the incredible joy that brings a bright and shiny beauty and a deep warm glow to our lives, that manages to shrink the darker, difficult parts.
Thanks so much for sharing your gift of writing and your beautiful perspective on parenting with all of us!
This is so very beautiful and powerful. I pray for a rich and deep relationship full of knowledge of each other, growing with my daughter as she grows. Thank you!
Beautiful and amazing. God provides for our hearts, doesn’t he, even in ways we don’t expect it. As I approach motherhood for the first time, I cling to the promises the relationship you write about. Thank you for sharing your heart, your mother, your daughter.
What a beautiful post! Words that could breathe hope into any parent’s heart!
Thank you, so much, for sharing!
Lisa Jo I just can always immensely relate so to your posts!!
My girls now have children of their own, and I tell them often, “See how much you love that sweet little baby in your arms, I felt the exact same way about you, and now you know why it was so important for me to spend that time with you, as you say, snuggling and making sure they have their “lovie” and documenting in our minds every moment in time, making countless memories and reminding you of them from time to time”. I know your heart aches to have known your mother better as you now have a daughter of your own, but truly, she is reflected in you each day, with each loving gesture towards your daughter. Loving mothers raise loving daughters and you are carrying on her legacy Lisa Jo. Our daughters may not remember everything, but it is absorbed into their beings and that is the most awesome thing ever!! BTW, Zoe is just as cute as she can be!! <3 Many hugs my friend.
You and your girl are beautiful wonders. I love how the heart of the Father shows in the way you love this daughter of yours. XOXO
I have a wonderful, tender, loving mother.
I have two little precious girly daughters.
It’s funny, since having my daughters I’ve also often felt like my mother. I’ve felt like I know she felt, and I’ve understood in such an indescribably deeper place how she is who she is. If you know what I mean.
And I know that you do.
Thanks.
Bawling… Because 24 years wasn’t near enough either and because your words hit me deep in their truth.
Oh, Lisa-Jo. I don’t know that I’ve ever read a post on motherhood that is so spot on. Such truth in your words. Make that Truth. The Truth is, God redeems, even when 18 years isn’t enough. He has bought back those years that were stolen from you, and wrapped them up in the gift of your Zoe.
Beautifully put… but, but, but: She may remember and surprise you after all. I remember so very much beginning at age 1 and a half and as I’ve grown up I’ve retained those memories of how very tenderly I was loved and taught. She may remember quite a bit of the same tenderness YOU will remember after all!
Just last night, I was driving, thinking these thoughts. These exact thoughts. These longing thoughts for my babies, knowing these years will be fuzzy memories for them at best, lost altogether at worst. I know we are imprinting the with the most important things – love, security, safety, belonging – but how can I go on knowing my son won’t remember how I pretended to be a jaguar with him for a solid month when he was four? A SOLID MONTH. I growled. I prowled. I could cry. Thank you for saying these beautiful words…the collective longing of mothers.
A solid month??? Rock star mom = you. And me? I dance the gumboot dances of South Africa for them and look ridiculous, I know it. But it helps us trace the milky way home and I never get tired of taking them down South – even if only in their imaginations.
This is so beautiful and touching, it reached deep into my soul.
Motherhood must be the most challenging, rewarding and self-satisfying part of life, truly a gift from God.
Even though I am not a momma {yet!}, my eyes fill with tears at the amazing grace of God in even our pain, how he redeems and bring your broken pieces together to make you this most amazing mother to your precious Zoe. And as I type the tears run down my cheek because I am in awe of His beauty…and yes…I too…am filled with my own hope.
Love to you, friend!
Thank you for this.
Today marks 30 years since my mom passed away. When she died, I was a month shy of my sixteenth birthday and was thinking this afternoon about how much impact a person can have on your life in such a relatively short amount of time. I treasure the many wonderful memories, and am thankful that she really knew me in ways I didn’t realize until I had my own children.
Such a beautiful post. I have a four month old little girl and I have tears streaming down my cheeks right now. You have captured such true emotion through your words. Well done…
I keep mulling this over and over since I read it yesterday. So often I think my perspective is reality, and forget that even my very life has blaring blind spots, years of love that have shaped me but that I couldn’t tell details of. And all our narratives are valuable, but woven together they are magnificent – the love written over generations: just beautiful. All the more reason to live in grace, to offer it freely to our mothers and daughters. Thank you for this, Lisa-Jo.
Oh.Oh.Oh – so lovely, so spot on. No mother can love a child perfectly, but mothers can be (and often are) the earliest grace-givers any of us ever knows. I am so delighted that mothering this glorious girl has brought you full circle to your own mother’s love for you. Remember how deeply frightened you were? How motherless you felt, how powerless to love a girl-child well? Isn’t God amazing, that you have traveled this road to the place you’ve landed?? Oh, my, Lisa-Jo – YOU are the miracle in the middle of your miracle girl. Such gifts God gives. My, oh my. Thank you for writing it down so perfectly.
Yes yes yes to all of it Diana – you know me so well through this little old blog of mine
And I marvel constantly at how afraid I was and how all along He was saving the best till last. Just amazing!
What a beautiful post. This touches the heart of every mother:):)
And gorgeous shots of your adorable little girl! Thanks for sharing! -Audry Cece (www.thedontlovedare.com)
This was such a beautiful post! I read it the other day and then shared it with my FB friends….but I just had to come back and tell you how much I enjoyed it! Enjoy might be the wrong word considering I started squalling just reading it.
I TRIED to tell my husband about it that night and started crying all over again in the middle of the Mexican restaurant! 
(I might be hormonal, ya think?! haha!) Anyway – loved this particular line, “I will have lived a hundred lifetimes of love for her by then.” Isn’t that the truth!!
So true! I lost my mother at 23, when I was almost beginning to know her…I didn’t lose her to death, but to the cult that I was brought up in and left at the age of 23. Some days it still feels like my entire family and everyone I knew died in some bizarre accident, and left me here alone – even though they are all still alive. Most of them I have never seen again. I still have phone conversations with my mum every now and then – but she doesn’t really know me as a mother (of 4!) and I don’t know her as a grandmother.
It’s a weird thing – the rawness of the hurt of leaving and losing is long past, and yet now I find myself grieving for my children, and what they’re missing out on in my family that they don’t even know about. They don’t know what it’s like having cousins their own age, or uncles and aunties or grandparents who aren’t elderly. And also for my family, that they are missing out on my amazing, gorgeous kids, and knowing me as a grown-up, not just a stroppy, bossy, grumpy teenager! Lol… sigh…
Lisa-Jo, I am so sorry for the loss of your mum. Thank you for baring your heart the way you do, and sharing your beautiful family and words.
This was beautiful and heartbreaking all at once. But I love that you are finding your mother in yourself as you mother your own little girl. I love that you are finding pieces of her along this new journey. I love that even though she isn’t with you in flesh and bone, she’s with you in the spirit of this motherhood journey.
I pray you continue to find beautiful little diamonds of your mother as you continue along… isn’t it so wonderful that God had her leave them there for you to find just when you needed them most?
{sniff} I have a much greater appreciation of my mom now that I have children of my own; pity it took me so long!
Lovely. I lost my mum just before I discovered I was pregnant with my youngest son. It affected me so much that I created a place where families can preserve their life memories in chronological order, from birth to ….whenever. My kids will know my mother’s story, and more importantly they will know my own. And when they’re grown they will be able to look back at the record I have kept of their own journey through the years, and recall the things they were simply too young to remember.
For info purposes, the website is http://www.saveeverystep.com, and it’s free to use