While waiting to board a flight to Nashville yesterday, a father sat across from me speaking to his son via FaceTime. He called his son by name, asked simple questions about his boy’s day, and remarked on an upcoming soccer game. I guessed that the boy, Wyatt, was young, which his father confirmed when he congratulated his son on a recent lucrative visit from the Tooth Fairy. I looked up, accidentally met his eyes, and gave him a small smile.
As he chatted, I thought of the boy’s mother at home, and her late-night masquerade as the Tooth Fairy, while, I presume, her husband snored miles away in a hotel room with a single, wrinkled business suit hanging in the hotel closet. I presume this is the case, because I lived some version of this scene for many years with my own traveling husband.
My children are nearly grown now, and my days as (an admittedly lazy) Tooth Fairy are over. My son, sat beside me on the sofa late in the evening a few weeks ago, and said without warning, “Will you miss me when I go to college, Mom?” I bit my lip before answering him. My heart quickened at the thought—something akin to a tremble. Words can’t possibly contain the maelstrom of feelings contained in my simple “Yes, of course!”.
A memory surfaced, days later, of the years I volunteered at Hobbit House, a local preschool when I was a college student. The school embodied the scent of stale crackers and apple juice and damp. The building, an aging mansion, creaked under the weight of so many little feet moving from circle time to snack time to art class. Once a week, I squeezed my adult-sized body into a miniature chair and cut leaves from construction paper or filled small cups with juice while autumn rain pelted the windows.
At Hobbit House, I leaned against the huge heat registers during snack time, where, after art class, we lay wet sheets of painted paper on the heaters to dry. We checked to be sure every piece was labeled with a child’s name. I wrote on the front in neat print: Brendan, Patrick, Hannah, Julie.
If I arrived early in the morning, we greeted the children as they entered from the great door in the hall. They arrived in raincoats with tiny packs strapped to their backs. Their mothers blew into the foyer on the wind and falling leaves of autumn. Crisp air swept through the hall like a shiver.
I remember wanting to be one of those blond, bobbed mothers with a backpacked child. I wanted to sign permission slips and ooh and aah over inscrutable artwork. I saw myself with my imaginary child, and I always saw us in shades of autumn.
It’s the first time I recall knowing in my bones that I wanted to be a mother.
When the time came, many years later, I enrolled my children at Little Footprints Preschool, forgetting my experience at Hobbit House entirely. I was the blond, bobbed mother sweeping into the hall with wet leaves clinging to my shoes. I was the mother snapping photos of donut-dusted smiles at the pumpkin patch, reading a picture book at story time, and ooh-ing and aah-ing over artwork that required a mind-reader to decode it. I became the mother I most wanted to be, even if I didn’t remember wanting it.
I’m less clear on what mother I’m supposed to be as my kids leave home. There isn’t a grown-up version of Hobbit House to teach me the simple rhythms of being with children. In my university classroom, mothers don’t escort my students in with instructions for being kind or sitting still or learning how to listen. I teach college students, but I resist the gut-level urge to parent them. Instead, I parent my own kids from an ever-increasing distance.
When I think about my early years as a mother, it’s a perpetual Autumn, with all of the vibrancy, sharp-elbowed beauty, and unpredictability of the season. I loved it then, and I love it now, even if I don’t have an exact vision for where it’s going.
